TwoHeadedBoy

That picture made me chuckle so I'm going to have to say you win this round.

I actually just got cocky and aggroed two groups at once. I'm very very bad at playing low level characters, totally unable to see the appeal of not having all of your powers yet, so sometimes I attempt to ease the pain by pretending I'm playing a real character. >.> In my defense, I pulled it off several other times.

Another thing worth mentioning here is Gravitic Emanation not only to push enemies away from your pets, but to stun them also. Layered with Inky Aspect and/or Unchain Essence, and with use of provoke (Dwarf Antagonize in AIB's case) it is much easier to keep pets alive. Ideally I think EE's should be a bit more survivable, but the main thing that would help in that department is if the AI told them to never get close to melee range. As for Emanation, I find it helps to always keep my pet window open. If I see an EE in trouble, I can click on it in my pet UI and either use provoke or Emanation in order to "rescue" it. This is especially convenient if you're flooded with enemies and it's hard to eyeball the exact problem location.

Huh? What do you mean? I have a Fire/Mental Blaster too, the AOE doesn't compare.

That proc is awesome. It goes off enough to refresh RoA noticeably faster.

I'm not seeing Fire anywhere close to Archery's AOE on a Blaster. Explosive Arrow+RoA is doing more damage than RoF and Fireball, AND EA takes a FF+Recharge proc. I don't ever count cones when I measure AOE because I hate cones on melee centric builds and a better AOE chain can be had for both combos without using them anyways.

I've been addressing throughout this thread that I think the performance of Blaster secondaries should be normalized around /mental and the nukes should all be normalized around RoA.

I wanted it done around my schedule so I paid for convenience, yeah. It's not like I missed the inf. I have a crapload of infamy. And yeah, playing characters that I've put a lot of effort into planning is fun for me. Sorry it's not fun for you, but I don't see what one has to do with the other really.
Huh? You sound way too hostile my friend. Is someone jealous of my Blaster?
Beam actually could probably solo a GM without using /Mental, hah. I didn't even buy it but if the -regen mechanic was used well and a good attack chain was run I bet it'd be doable.
Is telling other people which parts of their fun you approve of your idea of fun?

Much appreciated.

This used to be a game that presented an element of challenge, where Devs didn't plan on selling purple sets for IRL money and people didn't use super overpowered pets to accomplish things and claim they were part of their build.

My attitude has changed because of decisions that have been made.

Never implied reliance upon saturation was a weakness, I view it more as a balance. If things that required tohit checks and x targets for max buffs didn't have those conditions (ie; Soul Drain, Drain Psyche) they WOULD be overpowered. As they are now, the conditional discrepency is what makes them fair. Doesn't mean they're any less awesome.

Well with a high end /Soul Drain build you'll want to pick a primary with a Crashless nuke. Fire is the ST set on Blasters, you'll be seeing more AOE potential at max investment with Archery or DP, I guess AR also but the nuke is a cone so I am not seeing the synergy with /Dark. If you want a ST Blaster Fire/Ment is going to beat /Dark because of the -regen so I personally can't see the appeal in building a ST /Dark Blaster. As far as AOE goes though, Archery/Dark is > Archery/Ment, except with much less survivability potential in those sticky AOE situations and nowhere near the ST potential, once again due to a lack of -regen.

Basically if that extra AOE goodness from Soul Drain is worth those sacrifices to make an ultimate AOE Blaster, assuming you can afford to invest enough to keep yourself alive, go Arch/Dark but for a more well rounded performance it's Arch/Ment all the way.

Out of curiosity does AE in this case stand for something other than Architect Entertainment? >.>
Looks like the fellow who was running a "revision" of my Fire/MM was at 387 DPS on his best run. I really don't care for his revision of the build and think I could have personally done better given my preferred slotting choices (currently on the bottom of page 115 in the Pylon thread.)

Baha, trust me. I've been there. See: My apology.

Did someone not tell you yet that /Dark gets Soul Drain?

not really a matter of repeating myself, but your last statement was:

If you're aware of my position, shouldn't you know that I'm not using my personal accomplishments to justify Blasters being fine? I was replying to this statement because it carried an undertone of implication, which was that of me saying that my accomplishments= Blasters are fine. Now, I can totally understand why people might think that was my position based on my earlier reactions in this thread which is why I quoted the apology. If you're already aware of my clarified-since-then position, I guess I just don't understand what you're trying to say here.

Aww man. Not this again. I really thought we got past this. Now I have to quote myself some more.




There are better examples of my "campaign to buff blaster secondaries to the standard set by /Mental" throughout this thread, agreeing with the notion that all blasters are not fine due to other secondaries underperforming and /Mental Blasters performing at a comparable rate to melee damage AT's. It's way more than that, I've had to repeat this sentiment about a thousand times by now, and I'm just getting really tired of it while trying to keep my cool and not be disrespectful to anyone....

All that being said, please read my freaking posts going forward before you make the same might-as-well-be copypasta assumption made in the post I'm quoting at the top of this rant. Please, please. I don't want to have to repeat myself anymore.

And the hours upon hours I spent hypothesizing my next secondary main character, researching and compare/contrasting different sets across different AT's, ultimately deciding on the combination that would be most suitable and powerful in regards to how I play and what I wanted to accomplish, followed by the countless drafts and redrafts from trial and error constructing a perfect build capable of meeting all of my goals, followed by the almost a week and a half it took me to collect all the IO's to create the character, followed by the just over a week with 3-4 hour play sessions every day consecutively to solo the Blaster to level 39, followed by collecting my passive accolades, followed by the 850 million influence I gave my buddy Dechs to PL meh to 50 already because I had an over 20 billion build waiting in my base for me and I wanted to test it, followed by reconfirming all my performance hypotheses and testing the application in various scenarios, intertwined with collecting Incarnate abilities (something I'm still working on)

And the list continues to continue.

The point is that I don't just make alts like some people do. When I make an alt, I make the hell out of it. What I've invested into my Blaster is in no way contingent upon simply hitting an "I Win" button and accomplishing something. I put a great amount of effort into my characters, and in this case spend over 20 billion influence on them before they even exist, plus all the other countless investments of time, effort, and research I've already mentioned. Wanna know what the worst part is!? It's the badges! I have this overwhelming need to collect freaking BADGES on him now, after all of this. And I'm not even done with his Incarnate powers yet!

This is your opinion and you're entitled to it. My opinion is that the game provides me with a certain set of tools and I'm going to use each whenever a situation arises that I can yield strong results by using it. Tool metaphors sort of allude me since I'm a vegetarian musician who's never done manual labor in his life, but I'll try. You really can't fault someone in a craftsmanship competition who's given the same choice of tools to use as everyone else in order to achieve the best results. If you can accomplish multiple things with a single item more efficiently, and it was given to you within the parameters of the project without breaking the rules, I would say you are the most clever craftsman of them all and deserve any prize you receive.

Congrats Arcana, that's pretty awesome. I'm very tempted to dust off my Fire/Mental now just to compete with your times. >.> Someone in the Pylon forum who I helped out already recently ran my Fire/Ment build (though they made modifications that i can't vouch for) and got a pretty decent time, but I don't remember what it was. I'm really tempted to try my own build out for myself now, but I already have so much COH crap to do that his submission might have to do for now.

Heh. It's all good. I'm pretty sure that Z actually looked at the builds though, to be fair. I wouldn't have picked mine either honestly, not that it was bad at all, but there was one that I liked more. I plan on jumping on U Stream one of these days to ask Z how the build is treating him, see what kind of response I get.

As for first come, first serve: I just feel that this contest was set up very poorly. If you set certain requirements that must be met to meet X prize and you only want to select one winner, first come first serve is the only logical way to distribute the winnings. If you are willing to concede that all conditions have been met on one submission but continue to accept submissions after that point, logic dictates that you will be granting the originally stated prize to everyone who met the criteria to redeem it during the span of time before the deadline.

It is my understanding that the OP does not intend on awarding the originally promised prize to everyone who met the conditions they set when starting the contest during the span of time allotted, and so I feel there is a certain lack of integrity inherent in this competition.

Not to mention changing the rules midway through, which might as well be the text book definition of underhanded. I already had someone accuse me of not meeting a standard that was set after I made my submission. I blame the OP for their nonchalant attitude and blatant disrespect for the time people spent contributing to a contest they created... It has lead to being essentially accused of incompetence due to changing rules as the contest progresses, and on top of that after I already made a submission that met all required criteria for the prize offered, plus the bonus prizes.

By the way, Princess: I'm not offering humility anymore:



Due to your recent actions I do not feel that you are deserving of my humility and so I would no longer like to wave my claiming of the other two fairly earned purple sets on top of what I stated in the quoted post and what you promised as a reward. If you can change your rules after I've already won your contest, I can change my claim to align with the criteria you originally presented.

Now you are using the words "exploited" with "abuse" interchangeably and clearly carrying the same connotation/implication in both cases, regardless of whether you edited it out you have made your position clear, and I have rebutted it. At this point I see no logical reason for sustaining a dialogue with you, but Another_Fan will probably do a better job than I do anyways, they usually do.

And why is that? Do you feel that /Mental Blasters are exceeding the abilities of other archetypes so severely that a nerf is in order? It has been widely agreed upon that the majority of Blasters are underperforming when compared to other Archetypes, mental being the exception due to its ability to compete. Arcanaville has already said that if an AT-wide buff for Blasters happened, the Dev's would not be concerned about nerfing Drain Psyche. I'd also like to hear her opinion on the implied point of contention many have presented, which is that the performance of /Mental is somehow preventing the rest of the AT from getting a buff, and therefore /Mental requires a nerf. My personal opinion is that this is not the case at all.

Not everyone is an IO player though. The vast majority of the player base cannot afford my Blaster's build. It has already been pointed out by just about everyone that my Blaster is an extreme case that is not representative of the state of the AT as a whole, and I'd like to submit the argument that it is, by extension, not representative of the state of /Mental Blasters as a whole. I'm simply showcasing potential. Perma Eclipse, Perma Double Rage, Perma Phantom Army, Perma Chrono Shift, etc. are all examples of stupidly overpowered things that people like me can make permanent. It's not fair to call for nerfs to things on those grounds.