StratoNexus

Well, I have been trying to campaign for both defenders and corruptors myself.

You shouldn't buff one without the other!

Bad players kill slowly with Fire Blast. Bad players do not speak to the set as a whole.

Illusion has better and sooner damage than Earth, IME.

But you may be missing Flurry, Boxing, Kick, Jump Kick, and Air Sup. Just one of those makes soloing a pre-30 controller a breeze, IME. I try to get one by level 12. I don't normally even use Vet attacks.

I cannot speak for PvP, but this is most certainly not how HoB works in PvE.

When you click the button it makes one to-hit roll on everything in the AoE. If you hit, all 24 ticks are then rolled for, no matter how far away the bad guy runs or gets knocked back. Conversely, if you miss, no ticks are rolled for. I have never seen it start hitting someone who was out of the AoE and then ran in, although I never looked for that behavior and with Hot Feet it might be easy to miss since I expect orange numbers to go above enemies head when they get near me.

OK, I thought that might be all you were saying. I do not agree that using Stealth is the best way to analyze in game the power's aggro generation in isolation. First, adding stealth blows the whole isolation thing to hell. Second, what is the point? We started this discussion because I disagree with your premise that the other nukes deal "upfront" damage whereas HoB does not. It is actually the other way around, HoB starts dealing damage immediately after clicking the button, whereas Nova and Inferno must wait for their animation time to end before dealing any damage. You then added stealth to the mix. I conclude you did that because you knew I was right and therefore needed to change the circumstances to make it seem like you were still right (maybe I am guessing your motives wrong here)?

I am not arguing that HoB fails to aggro enemies. Of course, those enemies get aggroed just from running into range to use HoB, Nova, Inferno, Dreadful Wail, etc. So all the PBAoE nukes aggro just from being in range to use them. Your claim that Nova and Inferno have an advantage here is mistaken.

HoB has the advantage of dealing damage almost as soon as you click the button, whereas the other nukes do not deal that damage until the end of their animation time (mostly, Sonic's nuke's damage happens during the animation, pretty quickly after you push the button actually, one of the reasons it is my favorite standard nuke).

HoB has the advantage of being usable 3 times for every one use of a standard nuke.

HoB has a significant endurance consumption advantage over standard nukes.

Standard nukes have the advantage of significantly more damage.

Standard nukes have animations times ranging from ~45% to ~90% of the time of HoB, a decent advantage for the standard nukes, in most cases (poor Thunderous Blast, ).

Aggro generation solo is irrelevant, all the aggro is coming to you (unless you are counting on Gun Drone or Dark Servant to out aggro you or are Traps) and the standard nukes in a solo environment seem like they would be an odd thing to use, even with your difficulty cranked up (when I solo a character with a standard nuke I use it in case of emergency or just for fun). HoB will probably be used a lot more often solo, since it recharges faster and does not crash your end.

Aggro generation on a team is more relevant, but on a team, HoB is much more likely to kill even +2 enemies, because those other people on your team are doing damage too and/or give you enough time to open with BR or EC which is likely not to steal aggro from someone else while taking enemy health low enough for HoB to usually kill the enemies. If you are on a team and eating the alphas of spawns, you are either being buffed to withstand that or deserve your fate.

HoB will probably not kill all the enemies in a mid to large size spawn, and its animation is long enough that there is a good chance you will not only eat the alpha, but you may not kill all that many before they get a second shot off. HoB will cause some mitigation with its KD. Using lethal rounds will get you significantly more mitigation. Usually enough time to get a BR off, which does make it likely +1s perish, although you never know (the uncertainty is a big drawback, IMO).

Full Auto (with Build Up) is much more likely to only force you to take an Alpha, since it will kill +1s, and often cause enough damage to make +2s scatter (and you can often get that M30 or buckshot off as they start to scatter, getting most of them in a second AoE which is likely to cause even +2s to perish).

Rain of Arrows is the best nuke, and is probably intended to be. I do not expect HoB to be as good as RoA.

HoB could use a buff, IMO. I would like to see it deal more "upfront" damage with a higher average as well as a higher low end. But compared to the standard nukes and even RoA, HoB has more "upfront" damage, but by the end of the animations it has much less damage overall (usually).

When on a team, you are not the only person pushing damage powers.

Possibly. There are a few other likely changes that make sense too. Before I respond, I want to make sure I understand what he is trying to say.

I am just fighting a battle I already lost because sometimes people do that.

I agree that extreme specializing can be a problem. Ice Melee tankers have a very controllery feel, and I liked that they sacrificed damage for control. I could agree that they gave up too much damage for too little control, but I would have rather seen them get more control, instead of more damage. Buffing their single target damage in combination with larger AoEs for Frost and Frozen Aura would have been my preferred route.

In summary, Ice melee tankers did not need more (AoE) damage, because they can survive the extra time it takes to defeat spawns (and that is what teammates are for), especially if FA would have worked on enemies outside of an Ice Patch and/or had slow effects added. Other AoE powers were few, so they could control the sleepers and the larger radius would have been helpful on teams, since it would have been a more effective use of gauntlet

I think more people preferred the route they took, so I cannot argue against it logically.

However, Ice Manip blasters, IMO, give up too much damage for too little control as well. Ironically, I think blasters would be better off with damage in FA, because that stacks much better with other blaster AoE powers to remove minions and lts. While one primary and one APP can stack sleep with FA, every primary can stack more AoE damage. Increasing the mag to 3 would allow FA to remove minions and lts form the battle quickly, but then force most blasters to abandon their primary function in order to maintain that.

In summary, Ice Manip blasters need damage in Frozen Aura because they need to eliminate minions RTFN and Lts. shortly after. They need to be able to use their other AoE powers freely, otherwise they are gimping their damage even further than Ice Manip already does.

The one reason I could dig giving damage to FA was that I thought blasters could really use help in that area.

So those powers are good reasons and Salt Crystals doesn't exist?

Why did /Ice tankers need more damage? Were they having trouble keeping aggro?

Other nukes mezz spawns. Other nukes crash a spawns Endurance. Other nukes beat enemy to-hit into the ground. Other nukes put enemies on their backs, far away from you (HoB has a bit of this, or a lot of this on lethal rounds). The mitigation in Blizzard, another DoT nuke is just sick.

Even 30% defense for 5 seconds every 50-60 seconds is not beyond other nukes mitigation potential. A lot of people never thought blasters would get a power like Drain Psyche or Hoarfrost, and yet they did. I would think people would be OK with defenders and corruptors having a mitigation power, so its really only blasters where you could make the argument that they should not have it. Nukes are the exception for blasters, as almost every blaster nuke has mitigation of some sort beyond making dead things. HoB already has some with the KD, but of course it also lacks the making dead things part, so its arguable that it should have more mitigation.

I may not think HoB needs +Defense, but I do not think its a bad idea that the devs would never consider. It seems reasonable, thematic, and useful.

Naturally, since tankers are the AT all about damage and blasters are all about aggro control.

If you're a blaster, Frozen Aura still deals as much damage as Rest. Which makes sense, since tankers are the AT all about damage and blasters are all about aggro control.

What did you intend this sentence fragment to convey? I do not understand it in isolation, nor in the context of your post.

With Purples:

You are using game mechanics to decide how people would role-play react to psycho-bullet-spray.

I guess one could walk into a room where someone was spinning death and spitting out bullets and think, "Hey, that guy is 40 feet away. No way any of those bullets can travel more than 25 feet, therefore I can stand tall and take careful aim, no need for me to dodge."

The suggestions I have seen only propose the defense last as long as the animation (although I might make it last 5 seconds (that is just under an extra second) if I thought about going down this path). Popping it off before jumping into a spawn would be useless, since you would be buffing your defense before you are being attacked and that buff would be gone by the time anything did attack.

I did that with two characters. Once I was done playing challenge arcs, one was at level 21 and the other was level 19. It was an interesting way to get through the teen levels without having to deal with stronger enemies before Stamina.

That is not a Blast set, it is a Support set.

If we include Support sets because blasters get them, then Mental Manipulation has a single target, ranged fear power called Scare.

Stealth is not a Fire Blast or an Energy Blast power. Since you get to tack things on, so do I.

Go pay attention to what happens when you activate HoB a split second after one of your other teammates takes the alpha. And you can do that every minute instead of every three minutes.

Solo, I have had no issues running into the center of a spawn clicking HoB followed by either FSC or Bullet Rain. During my 30s, I ran at +1 / x3 with bosses. During my 40s, I have been running at +1 / x6 with bosses. In my 40s I have TP and Hot Feet to aid me, but HoB is not recharged every spawn, so I get to use Bullet Rain + FSC a lot, and somehow I still do not die, even though they take longer to animate together than HoB. In my 30s, I did not have any appreciable defense. By my early 40s, I did have about 16% ranged and 8% Sm/LE.

I do use inspires, but since I turned up the size of the spawns they drop like crazy when solo, so I have them to burn.