Chris24601

I agree. One thing that can definitely be taken from the reactions though is that, at least for the Tac Arrow players, these range changes are definitely a passionate issue. I think that should also be considered when it comes to changes to the set and that perhaps nerfs to areas other than the range in ENA and Ice Arrow might be a way to tune the set that won't spike emotions quite so much. Is there any way we could try ENA with range 80' but say halve the immobilize duration and/or reduce the mag to 2" (or whatever you feel is a fair trade-off for keeping the 80' range) and something similar for ice arrow in one of these page builds? Just to see how its received relative to the current range reductions? Maybe we're wrong about how disruptive the trade-offs to keep the range at 80' would be to our playstyle (just in a different way)... but it'd be really nice to feel that for ourselves, because there's a lot of passion behind the 80' range and where there's passion, logical arguments are less effective than letting us actually feel what those trade-offs to keep the range would be.

First LOL at the blaster OSA being considered anything other than garbage tier. Just previously I had to actually explain to someone because they were stunned no one was taking it. Short version, you have to cannibalize your existing build to slot it and at one slot it’s garbage... especially for a level 38+ power pick when ancillaries open up at 35. To the point; Yes, actually... the reduced range completely disrupts the current playstyle of the set so much that those who play it would accept additional reduced magnitudes and halving the duration of the immobilize/hold in order to keep the 80’ range. A big part of the problem is that, unlike newer MMOs, we don’t have a range indicator. We have to guess when we’re in range. When everything has the same range you can open with whichever power makes the most sense for the situation and just nudge closer until it activates. But unless you want to open with ENA or Ice you have to guess whether you’re in range for them or not when you do your opening attack... and because both are part of people’s regular attack chains it can lead to situations where your first shot goes off and then the “derp” sound because your second shot isn’t in range... completely disrupting your rhythm. The related problem is that, because of how enhancements scale when exemping, you can’t achieve a consistent range fix using enhancement slotting. You can only be assured of the fix at level 32+. So again, very disruptive because you can’t just see the range to a target, you have to eyeball it and exemping will change the ratios (to the point that enhancement slotting to get you back to 80’ at level 32, goes to just 66’ at level 15). Similarly, because it scales off the base range, set bonuses to range actually make the difference in range WORSE rather than reduce the problem. The whole range thing is an utter mess for existing Tac Arrow players. 90% chance I’ll just shelve mine rather than deal with the frustration. Again... all the Tac Arrow players posting here have said they would accept significant additional nerfs in other areas... reduce the base accuracy, halve the mez duration. Make the net arrow a mag 2 so you need to hit LTs twice just to immobilize them... just leave our range for ENA and Ice Arrow at 80’. Its clear from your comments you don’t actually play the set... so take it from the actual users of the set that we would find half duration or mag 2 to be LESS disruptive to our playstyle than dropping the range from its current 80’ to 60’.

That’s not what I mean by shtick... that’s fluff. Mechanically it’s immobilize and hold are bog standard Blaster stats. It’s got a fairly mundane build-up and sustain powers. In short, other than the bow graphics there is absolutely nothing that makes the set stand out from the rest of the Blaster secondaries except of course that it has no melee attacks at all. Letting it have the 80’ range on the net and ice arrows would give it something to make it stand out from Fire’s DoT or the more stackable debuffs of sets like Dark or Atomic or Cold.

Regardless, my point that Psi doesn't have to be the only set with "extended" range (I mean, really, we're asking for it to be the same range as an ordinary primary attack) stands. Tac Arrow lacks a cohesive shtick like Fire's damage over time or Dark's to-hit debuffs. I suggest that Range makes just as much sense as its shtick as any of those, particularly since it only brings it to the same range as the Archery primary and relies entirely on ranged attacks with no melee options in the mix.

Played it. Spent considerable time trying to work around the changes... ultimately decided I'd probably just shelve my Archery/Tac Arrow rather than go through all the work since the needed changes to my build only actually fully work at level 30+. The changes aren't good and are fundamentally changing the way you have to play the set. Even worse... the things that have ultimately been nerfed AREN'T what these changes imply. The actual nerfs to my build? Making it more annoying to exemp below 30, about 10 million influence to swap out enhancements for ones to counteract the changes and a serious doubt as to whether I even want to bother with the changes on Live over shelving it and rolling yet another Scrapper because at least they aren't completely changing the way my sets on them play. The funny thing is we already have an example of a secondary set with more range (mental manipulation) and secondary debuffs (honestly, I didn't know "range" was considered mental's schtick until it was brought up here... I thought -recharge was its thing based on the secondary effects of Mind Probe, Psychic Scream and Psychic Shockwave). There is NO reason for extra range to be exclusive to psychic, particularly when psychic has other secondary effects (the aforementioned -recharge), given that Tactical Arrow has no specific shtick to it other than using bow animations. Atomic has -Def, Darkness -ToHit, Electric -End, Fire has DoT, Cold has -Speed... but what is Tac Arrow's special? I vote its special should be RANGE.

It’s pretty simple and two-fold; A) one of the two powers merged was only ever slotted with just its base slot and the merged power will use all the slots from the other and really need an extra one to meet the performance of the original two... as a result, you can only slot Oil Slick by pulling from other powers you’ve previously slotted. B) unlike the rest of the set, Oil Slick Arrow targets the ground rather than a target. If you’re like me, a person who steers using the old Doom-era arrow keys, then constantly moving between the keyboard and mouse to drop the Slick makes it more trouble than its worth, particularly in light of the first issue which means its not even a super-effective power when it is used. Yes, powexec_location can help (and binding the new /interact command will be a godsend for me), but it’s still quite discordant from the rest of the set. So, I just snagged a single-slot Stealth for a fifth LotG IO and called it a day since I can flip it on when I need more -Per than just Flash Arrow provides. Basically, the Blaster version of Oil Slick Arrow just isn’t good enough to warrant rebuilding an existing toon to take advantage of it. If you wanted a t9 everyone would take; give us a “Boost Range” toggle that moves all those 60’ powers up to the same 80’ that’s on live. Better yet, put ESD Arrow back to hold, make IT the t9 and put in Boost Range as the t8.

Yeah, I can confirm from testing out Tac Arrow that it just swaps the current power for the replacement automatically and leaves the slotting unchanged, even if said slotting is useless for the power (ex. Acrobatics became Oil Slick Arrow three-slotted with Luck of the Gambler). Changes this extensive always came with a freespec on Live and I’m hoping they will here too. I don’t care how cheap people think respecs are... they aren’t free and if you’re level 41 and out of respecs you’ve got a long wait for another free one so you’re down to running a gimped build until you can gather the resources for a paid one (i.e. run a respec trial or get enough merits/influence to buy a respec recipe). I suspect the majority of players don’t do the market mini-game so getting 50 merits or however many million inf they go for on the auction house isn’t trivial. These changes definitely call for granting everyone a freespec when it goes live.

Yes, and I've said as much. As of this build if you remain at mostly level 29+ you would lose the 6 piece set bonus off of two powers. In my case that was -2.5% ranged defense, -1.25 energy/negative defense (thunderstike) and 1.88% off my AoE defense (entomb); all my positional defenses are higher than my fire/cold defenses so there's no loss there... and I dropped the chance for +absorb from the Entomb set. But then I also swapped out other sets so I gained in some and lost in others... Going from Annihilation (one 6 slot and one 5 slot w. KB>KD) to Artillery (two full sets) and another LotG (in stealth which I took in place of Oil Slick Arrow) netted me -2.7% max endurance (I have so much its irrelevant), -4.5% energy/negative resistance, -4% regeneration (-20+16), -6% endurance discount, -3.75% AoE defense, +8.22% ranged defense, +6.88% energy/negative defense, +4% damage, +18% accuracy and +7.5% recharge. The ranged and energy defense improvements from the set swapping more than cancel out the losses from the sixth slot of thunderstrike and I'm down a bit of AoE defense, but it's still pretty high overall and my high energy/negative (which you see a lot of high levels) defenses handle a LOT of that too (sappers and carnies are cake). It's NOT my preferred trade by any means... I had to do a lot of number crunching and experiments on Test to get the numbers I got and other people are going to have to do their own calculations because I've got a very particular single-target DPS focused build; others will have different priorities. However, we need to look at hard numbers when trying to present options and alternatives. For example, I can now say with certainty that this change will have negligible impact on my play style beyond making exemping to very low levels less appealing and costing me a bunch of influence (a one-time expense). It will make me slightly squishier in some ways and a little tougher in others. It will have almost no impact on the damage and lockdown distance or duration of ENA and barely any on Ice Arrow. I can then easily point out that "discourage exemping" and "one-time influence cost" aren't really good nerfs to the set relative to leaving the range alone and chopping the immobilize duration in half which would then force an actual playstyle choice between full t1 damage (slotting for damage) or immobilizing as long as live currently does with no slotting at all (slotting for immobilize) because you can no longer get both at full strength.

Okay, so I ran some numbers in test including the effects of set bonuses - For comparison, the primary 80' range becomes 88' with a +10% range set bonus (ex. Superior Blaster's Wrath) or 96' with +20% (Superior Blaster's Wrath + two Barrage +5% set bonuses). - The 60' range with no slotting for range becomes 66' with +10% range set bonus and 72' with a +20% set bonus. - The numbers below are for 1 and 2 slotting 50+5 Range IO's into the powers with no set bonus, +10% set bonus and +20% set bonus). Level 32-50 1 IO: 79.13' (none), 85.13' (+10%), 91.13' (+20%) 2 IO: 93.94' (none), 99.94' (+10%), 105.94 (+20%) Level 29 1 IO: 77.08' (none), 83.08' (+10%), 89.08' (+20%) 2 IO: 92.31' (none), 98.31' (+10%), 104.31' (+20%) Level 19 1 IO: 69.93' (none), 75.93' (+10%), 81.03' (+20%) 2 IO: 79.85' (none), 85.85' (+10%), 91.95' (+20%) Level 7 (lowest possible via Oroboros) 1 IO: 63.17' (none), 69.17' (+10%), 75.17' (+20%) 2 IO: 66.35' (none), 72.35' (+10%), 78.35' (+20%) From my observations... one IO + Superior Blaster's Wrath keeps you within 5' of your primary attacks (and above 80' overall) down to level 29. Two IO's + Superior Blaster's Wrath keeps you within 3' of your primary attacks (and above 80' overall) down to level 19. If you spend a lot of time exemping down to do Posi, Synapse and Yin then if these ranges go through I'd recommend two maxed range IO's in the powers. If you only rarely drop below 29 then a single range IO in each will mostly fix the range differential unless you're the type who sidles right up to the edge of max range and doesn't open with ENA or Ice. Another aspect to consider if getting the ranges as equal as possible is the goal might be slotting two basic 50's in place of 50+5's since that would put your numbers between the slightly too short 1 maxed IO and the slightly too long 2 maxed IOs. So, I'm still going to say this would be a LOT less complicated if the ranges were just 80' and other things were nerfed, precisely because I don't think the goal of these changes is for Tac Arrow players to start doing in-depth build analysis for smoothing out differential ranges with minimal losses to set bonuses. If you want to consistently reduce performance, nerf something that's harder to compensate for. For example, right now it is very easy to slot the ENA for damage because its base immobilize duration is more than long enough for blasters to lock down a mob until you've dealt with everything else. If you cut the base duration in half though, now there's a meaningful choice between slotting for damage (making it basically another T1 attack with a short duration immobilize) or slotting for immobilize (half the damage of your primary damage slotted attacks, but control back around the live base range values) and whichever way you slot it, you've got a fairly substantial nerf to its performance.

This will be enough to get me to re-roll what was supposed to be a Dual Pistols/Devices Blasters, but not being able to see my costume at all due to the sustain led me to drop and re-roll with other secondaries a couple times before ending up switching ATs entirely to a Traps/DP Defender. Honestly? Half the problem with some of the sets isn't the mechanics, its the god-awful graphic choices (which, to be fair, were not typically made by our current devs) like making all your costume choices worthless because you're perpetually invisible even to yourself unless you deliberately debuff yourself for purely cosmetic reasons.

60’ for the Electronet Arrow is at least a step in the right direction, though I agree with the sentiment that the longer 80’ is a staple characteristic of the set. 60’ at least will require only one 50+5 Range IO to mostly fix (and I’ll be testing what using two while exemping down looks like shortly) which in my rebuild gets me my increased speed from the Thunderstrike set back which combined with only needing two 50+5’s cuts the expense of the rebuild considerably (from 20 enhancement boosters to 10) and since you can slot two before getting close to the ED diminishing returns there may be a balance point on slotting two range into ENA and Ice that will put them at roughly the same range as your main attacks even with superior blaster’s wrath and additional +range set bonuses. I’d still rather see a reduced mez duration (and I’ll note that Trick Arrow’s Net Arrow had it’s duration reduced and I’m not sure where that puts it’s duration relative to ENA due to various AT scalars) with the range maintained at 80’ simply because there’s less incentive for Tac Arrow players to search for workarounds that render the intended nerf irrelevant. Honestly? The main nerf for me looks to be to my influence account as it’s pushing me from being okay with mostly mid-range sets to looking at higher end sets to recover as many lost set bonuses as possible. The type of nerfs I think you’d really want for over performing sets would be ones where the player either does nothing in reaction or, at most (due to the change with Acrobatics/Gymnastics/Oil Slick Arrow) uses a respec to fix some slotting issues, but doesn’t try to completely rebuild their character to get around the changes. In other words, changes where the outcome can mostly be predicted (i.e. most everyone accepts the dev selected nerfs without other changes) vs. changes that produce even more uneven results (major changes in slotting with each player taking a different course ranging from shelving, accepting as is, sacrificing other areas to counteract the nerf or upgrading the quality of their slotting to more expensive sets than they currently were settling for).

I will say, I don’t know how your character is slotted up, but I’ve been able to switch some slotting around to where I’m only down about 2 mph on my run and jump (I got my flight speed back), about 5 dpa off my ENA and 4 ft off it’s range (82’ vs. Snap Shot’s 86’) and, I think 4% off my AoE defense as long as I don’t exemp below level 29 (32 is no loss, but the range loss is barely feelable at 29). I also ended up with my ranged and energy/neg defense bumping up a point (46% and 44% respectively) and my global accuracy up about 8 points, which covered the loss in ENA due to not slotting the Acc/Dam and Acc/Dam/End from Thunderstrike in it (using two 50+5 IOs instead). Accepting that the devs feel the set needs a nerf, those losses feel “acceptable”; though it’ll be very costly on live to rebuild after the break. That said, I’d still prefer the range be left alone and something else in ENA and Ice Arrow to be nerfed and for ESD Arrow to keep its hold, because then whatever losses will be what the devs actually intended them to be and the breaks from changing Acrobatics/Gymnastics and Oil Slick Arrow can be fixed with just a respec and no additional costs. I really doubt Captain Powerhouse nerfed the range thinking “this will cost Tac Arrow players tens of millions of influence, shave off a few set bonuses and make them less willing to help out lower level players,” but that’s what the range nerfs are ACTUALLY doing for this actual player of the set. Like I’ve said throughout this, Tac Arrow players are willing to give up a LOT to keep their range on their bread & butter abilities. I gave up quite a bit of time to devise a workaround on Test and was willing to lose multiple set bonuses and other slotting bonuses plus now working to earn the significant piles of merits/influence on live to afford the changes needed to keep the range with minimal losses elsewhere. Far better, I think, would be for Captain Powerhouse to keep the range and look for nerfs Tac Arrow players will NOT completely subvert in an effort to keep their range. Again, things like mez duration or mag or even the base accuracy are all things we’d be happy to give up without feeling the need to completely rebuild our characters from the ground up just to keep what they’re currently thinking of taking away... then at least there’d be a measure of control from the dev side in terms of affecting how the set is played, because currently each player is going to be evaluating their builds and making different changes to keep the range... or just shelving the characters as unplayable.

But 50 feet IS Perception range for an even level mob (and its further for higher level ones), so with a 50 foot range you have to aggro the enemy before you can use the electro-net arrow on them. That’s not tactical at all (tactical would be immobilizing a melee enemy as your opener to reduce the number of mobs who can attack you at once. At this point I’ve resigned myself to Captain Power having made up his mind and all this thread is actually for is to vent out spleens and maybe catch bugs in his changes. Even if I’m wrong on that, it at least puts me in the proper frame of mind for preparations. That’s why my last couple of posts, while not stopping asking for reverting the range back up in exchange for other nerfs, have changed to finding workarounds like the best reslotting to keep as much range as possible with as little loss elsewhere. My next step is to go back to live and power through some big merit reward arcs so I’m ready for it (I believe enhancement boosters are 5 each, so I’ll need at least 75 in reserve for that, pretty sure I still have a respec left, then it’s just whatever funds I’ll need for a set of Stupefy, another LotG recharge proc (because Oil Slick is another skippable t9 I don’t have the slots for) and two sets of Artillery to replace the Bombardments in my Archery AoE’s (because as I noted... +range set bonuses make the uneven feel of these changes worse and Artillery’s ranged defense and +Acc will make up for the loss of two slots from the Thunderstrike set going into ENA after this goes live). The net result is I’ll lose about 2 mph off my Hover speed and a percent or so loss off dps, both of which I might yet be able to get back with a few more slotting changes (I’ll be testing that today) and a reluctance to exemp below level 30 since doing so will disproportionately affect the range on a third of my attack chain. That way, if Captain Powerhouse decides to revert it, Great! I’ve now got plenty of merits/influence I can spend on other toons. If not, then I’ll have the respec and enough influence/merits banked to make the expensive changes this change is going to inflict on every Tac Arrow player who wants to try and keep playing as they currently enjoy.

Okay, here's some more testing with some real numbers. Level 50, if you don't have any range set bonuses beyond Blaster's Wrath, you can get the pre-nerf play style mostly back via two 50+5 Range IO's in ENA and one in Ice Arrow. This will, of course, remove the 5th and 6th set bonus from ENA and the 6th from Ice Arrow and slightly impact their performance in that you'll only have four/five slots instead of 6 for Acc/Dmg/Recharge/EndRdx. If you're the type who used to creep right up the edge of the range bracket, you'll notice that ENA and Ice Arrow don't QUITE go as far as your Archery powers, but if you're just stopping at a distance that feels right (well beyond normal perception range... probably somewhere around 70-75') then you'll not notice the range difference and the rest of the performance issues are going to be a couple percent shaved off various attributes. The biggest one for me here is actually that I swapped the Thunderstrike in Snap Shot for my Blaster's Wrath in ENA simply because I wanted the full set bonuses, so ENA is now missing out on the fire damage proc. So at level 50, its actually not too bad... ...HOWEVER... Exemping utterly KILLS it. I used Oroboros to cross-check the effects and even with the above 50+5 Range slotting at level 9 (the lowest Oroboros could take me) the range crashes to 55.29' for ENA and 63.17' for Ice Arrow. At level 24 the same slotting will result in a range of 71.97' for ENA and 73.31' for Ice Arrow. Level 32+ the Exemplar effects no longer apply so you're back into the initial "98% of pre-nerf values." I offer these up primarily as data points. In terms of level affecting play style, its pretty significant, especially if you're planning on helping out with a Posi, Synapse or Yin TF. And to reiterate from the previous data, if you slotted yourself up with a bunch of +range set bonuses it's going to be felt a LOT more than if you're just running the Blaster's Wrath range bump. My Archery/TA Blaster played a LOT smoother when I dumped the Barrage sets out Fistful of Arrows and Explosive Arrow (each gives a +5% set bonus to range). Likewise, using just Blaster's Wrath rather than the Superior variety (I tested with both on Test, but I only use the default on Live because unslotters on an inactive toon are cheaper than buying an entirely fresh set of ATO's for a new toon) made it smoother still as the ranges were short by about 4'. * * * * The other issue related to these changes is just the flat-out EXPENSE to the player in the form of needing a Respec (because when this goes live, if you had Gymnastics you'll now find yourself with Oil Slick Arrow slotted with Luck of the Gambler), 15 Enhancement Boosters (for the Range IOs) and to buy a Stun set to replace the Hold set that is currently in ESD Arrow and possibly some new Targeted AoE sets for Fistful of Arrows and Explosive Arrow due to the +range set bonuses actually making the primary problem of the range reduction (mismatched ranges) worse rather than better. That's quite a bit to hang on players because the Devs decided to change which powers accepted which enhancements. Even with the freely available IO's and merit purchases it still took me the better part of an hour just to respec and make all the necessary purchases together. If you didn't have a bunch of merits, influence and a respec banked when this went live you could be stuck with a very gimped build for quite a while... particularly if you're not someone who isn't rolling in billions of influence because they don't play the market. I'd recommend at least a free respec like the Live devs used to throw up every time there was a major powers update and, with changes this extensive (multiple replacement IO's/IO sets), possibly even some merits to avoid the feeling of being doubly punished for changes we have no control over beyond our feedback here. Note: You'd only need a respec to fix things if ESD Arrow applied a hold to everything (no need to replace the Hold slotting for Stun slotting) and left the ranges in ENA and Ice Arrow alone (no need to muck with Range IO+booster and replacing sets with +range set bonuses in them).

The thing is, unlike a lot of other MMO's your tier 1 & 2 powers are still relevant and useful at higher levels. The Live devs called them "bread & butter" powers for a reason. One reason ENA is such is that you start with it... and unlike a lot of other MMO's, the journey to 50 is as, or even more, important to the play experience as what it looks like at max level. You won't pick up Gymnastics until Level 28, you won't have ESD Arrow until level 35 and Oil Slick Arrow until level 38 at the earliest. Similarly, you'll lose those if you exemp 5 levels below where you picked them up. Wanna run a Posi 1? Kiss your level 22+ power picks goodbye for the duration. Side-bar: This is also ANOTHER reason to argue in favor of keeping the base range at 80'. Because even two 50+5 IOs can't quite get it back to 80'... so the range will be even less when you're leveling up and the best you can slot are 20's, 30's and 40's. The second reason ENA is a bread & butter power is that its got such a short recharge compared to the rest of your kit (Ice and Flash being the only others that can be slotted to be useful more than once per fight). Short recharge means you'll use it A LOT. I literally use it every third shot in my rotation... so not just 99% of my Tac Arrow use comes from ENA, but 33% of my overall attacks are ENA. THAT is pretty darned 'core' by any reasonable definition.

I don't disagree. Until then though, here we are. Now, I've done some more testing and with two Level 50+5 Range IO's into ENA you're back to about 97% of the pre-nerf range (and ED is hitting it HARD at that point). But if you previously had it slotted using a set you'll feel it in lost set bonuses (7% speed, 2.5% ranged defense from my Thunderstrike) AND in the base numbers (damage mod down to 91%, end reduction down to just 22%, acc down to about 30%). Ice Arrow at a base of 60' slotted with a single 50+5 Range IO gets you back to 79.15' and the set bonus disparity is similarly less extreme (in my case it only cost me some resistance and the "chance for absorb" proc). And there's still the occasional hiccup if you're nudging yourself right up to the edge of the range and this is, ironically, because set bonuses to range actually INCREASE the disparity rather than reduce it (i.e. 80' w. +10% from a set bonus is 88'... 50' w. +56% from enhancements and +10% from a set bonus is only 83'... so without the set bonus they're within 2' of each other... after the set bonus they're now 5' apart from each other). So, if the range thing is something the devs have a hard "No" on regardless of how much dissatisfaction is registered, then for the sake of smooth play I'd actually recommend AGAINST adding additional range increase set bonuses beyond the one you get from Blaster's Wrath as while they'll increase the overall range, you'll feet that lag where your Archery Arrows are firing off but getting the Out of Range "woomp" from ENA and Ice Arrow because you're actually sitting at 85'. Because of that sloppiness I'd still much prefer the 80' ranges be maintained, but I also bring this up because of the desire to maintain the range component, the changes to ENA and Ice Arrow may not actually end up nerfing the things they're trying to nerf (ex. I'm trading some extra END cost, a few points of damage, 2 mph off my hover speed and dropping my range defense by 2.5%). I'd also recommend that the Hold on robots portion of the ESD arrow be changed over to Stun to match the effect on everyone else simply because of the slotting issues that having it take both Stun and Hold enhancements and needing both to gain full effect causes. AoE stun is still a good panic button for those who use it that way and, again, makes the slotting less problematic. If it goes live as is though, I'd suggest changing the slotting to Stun simply because the number of non-robot enemies definitely outnumbers the number of robots (even though this, ironically, means your ESD arrow is LESS effective against robots than fleshy bags of mostly water).

You know, just for the sake of exploring options... other than institutional inertia, what is the rationale for ANY Blaster secondary single target immobilizes being just 50’ instead of the same 80’ as their primary attacks? As has been mentioned, even if you copy/pasted a ST immobilize (or hold) direct from a Controller primary, the combination of AT modifiers for duration and lack of AT buffs (containment, domination) would put that power significantly behind what a Controller or Dominator could accomplish (in addition to having other control powers to stack on like their AoE immobilize/hold. This whole subsection of changes we’re giving feedback to is essentially a balance pass on all the Blaster secondaries and part of that was a statement that some sets were undertuned and need improvement. So, what if part of that balance pass was just taking all those ranges for the ST mezzes up to the same base range as the primary attacks? The sets would then still be balanced with one another and more range on those abilities wouldn’t change the way those sets currently play (you can always be closer than max range) and still wouldn’t be stronger than the options available to actual control-focused ATs. Just a thought for a different way to look at things.

Any chance we can make that TWO sets? Because, as should be readily apparent from the comments and reactions to the comments here, this change is "shelve my main" level disruptive to the style of play that Tac Arrow has provided for the past year and a half. The feedback so far has been on the order of 80% negative by number of posters/reactions to the range changes and those same people have also voiced willingness to see other areas nerfed to compensate for keeping the range. Halve the mez duration. Drop it back to Mag 2. But the 50' range reduction is just crippling to enjoyment of the set. Let 'Range' be Tactical Arrow's shtick (since better control is clearly no longer it). Its actual players, myself included, seem willing to trade quite a bit to keep the range component of these powers. It may not have been your original intent, but range is clearly the most popular component of the set's bread-and-butter powers and sometimes the best things in life happen because of a mistake resulting in something amazing.

I note you still haven't answered my question; do you have any experience with the TA set in play and how it plays differently now or are you just arguing from design theory? My hunch from your avoidance is that you're pure theory-crafting (and if you're not, you're certainly coming off that way) and have no real skin in the game of how this change affects the people who actually PLAY the set. You've asked others to do the work of proving you wrong, but the people saying its a problem posted first, that means it's your job to prove that our actual play experiences are wrong, not demanding we prove your 0 play/100% theory-crafting is incorrect. If you haven't already... roll up an Archery/TA Blaster on live, level them to 50, then take them to test and see how it FEELS; how disruptive this change actually is to the playstyle you will adopt as you use it and which those who actually are using it now don't want to lose. Other players who, AGAIN, feel the range is an important enough factor to their play experience that they are willing to accept further nerfs in other areas of the power (ex. cut mez duration nearly in half, reduce the mag of ENA by a third or stackability by two-thirds, etc.) in order to keep the range component. This is NOT some group of players saying "we refuse to see the need for change"... these are people saying "you're changing the powers in a way that destroys our play experience and would really rather have you nerf other parts of the power to compensate instead." Also, you keep saying the designer had limited tools, but things like range and mag and duration are spreadsheet data and Captain Powerhouse had to be aware of the ranges of the other Blaster secondary holds and immobilizes back when he was plugging them in and yet still chose to make them 80' to match the normal ranges of Blaster Primaries.

50' is the default perception range for even level mobs... so you have to move to at least the perception range of the closest mob in a spawn before starting to employ ENA (and even then just on the closest) rather than being able to initiate combat with ENA (locking down one mob of choice in the spawn) before the hostile mobs can react because you can start from 51-80' away. That's a big difference in how its currently employed. Do you have much experience with the Tac Arrow set? I ask because all your arguments have been based on general design theory and not "how does it feel to actually play this set?" Only listening to design theory is how D&D 4E happened; way too much focus on theory-crafting and not "how does this actually feel at the table." Tac Arrow has a specific play style that is different from the other Blaster secondaries and the reason people like it is BECAUSE it is different from all the other Blaster secondaries. Other set groups are allowed to have outliers... ex. Storm Summoning under the Support sets plays very different from Empathy or Rad or Dark or Thermal or Time. Do you want to take Hurricane, Tornado and Thunderstorm from my second favorite character (Storm/Dark Defender) too because Storm doesn't get a proper AoE heal and other ally buffing abilities like the majority of the other Support sets have? And how is Tac Arrow any different as a set that does things a bit outside the norm?

Which was pretty much what most users of Tac Arrow were doing because the entire apparent point of the set was to, as with original recipe Blasters, use range as armor. As evidence of this, you see multiple posters with multiple likes each on their comments specifically complaining about the range reductions to ENA and Ice Arrow, but no complaints about the endurance and recharge increases or mag reductions to those same powers (in point of fact, said posters have indicated a willingness to trade further nerfs to duration, mag, recharge and endurance costs in order to keep the range at 80'). By contrast there are comparatively few comments on the Gymnastics/Acrobatics merge (mostly limited to the loss of jump control) and comments on Oil Slick Arrow have been basically a 50/50 split of "Nice" and "Skippable" which probably averages out to a solid "Meh." But this is WHY we have the Test Server in the first place... to catch things like this where the particular fix breaks things in unintended ways (in this case seriously disrupting what multiple people have felt was a valid Blaster play style) and find other ways to fix them. Looking into it, my suggestion would be to reduce the base duration of ENA to 9.5 seconds and Ice Arrow to 8 seconds. This would correspond to using generic 50 Range IO's to restore the lost range, but without screwing up set slotting (i.e. you could get ENA's range back up to 80' if you slotted two Range IOs, but then you can only four slot a set). Honestly, trying to fix the range via slotting just makes Frankenslotting the rest more appealing since the 5 and 6 piece set bonuses are pretty much off the table for it.

And this right here is why the current changes really need to be looked at... when someone seriously suggests that only snagging Upshot, Eagle Eye and Gymnastics and skipping everything else for Pool powers is a better option, it’s a sign the set may have been over-nerfed. And I’m going to reiterate that based on just posted comments there’s at least half-a-dozen players of the set with the opinion that these changes so fundamentally change the way they enjoy playing that they’d shelve or even re-roll their Tac Arrow characters over these changes. The range reductions seem the most universally unpopular, with those expressing that sentiment more than willing to accept other restrictions on the powers in trade for keeping the range (i.e. they accept the need for nerfs, just different nerfs that don’t change the fundamentals of the set’s playstyle). The addition of oil slick seems rather split... some people have said “yay! Oil Slick!” while others are “this just doesn’t mesh with the current playstyle at all... so another skippable t9.” The fact that it’s a weaker version of what a Corrupter can get at 35 or a Defender at level 26 that you can’t even take until level 38 doesn’t do it any favors either. Also valid is the feedback about flash arrow being resistible having a huge effect on playstyle not for the -to-hit (which can be compensated for with slotting), but the -Perception (which cannot be fixed with any slotting). I know I used to use it as a limited stealth option when I wanted to bypass certain spawns on a mission and even at higher levels I use it for aggro management (flash then snipe the mobs on the edges who won’t alert the main spawn) way more than I’ve ever relied on the -tohit part. Perhaps removing the -tohit but leaving the -Per unresistable (making it more akin to a smoke grenade in its effect) would be an acceptable compromise? And the criticism on slotting for ESD arrow is something I hadn’t even considered, but is entirely valid... You can slot for Stun OR Hold, but not both if you want to use full sets. I’m also wondering at the line of thinking on Stun vs. Hold as the only effective difference is that stun lets the target stagger around a few feet and wouldn’t stack with other holds on the same target. That really does drop it down to a situational use power depending on your slotting... not something you really want to see in a t8 you can’t even select until level 35. My suggestion? Make the ESD arrow the tier 9 capstone and let it keep its hold and then look at something more like the poison gas arrow as the tier 8. Or, how about instead of poison gas... how about a sleep gas arrow? No debuffs (so no aggro), just a sleep effect to allow for bypassing spawns and more tactical pulling in a different way than flash arrow allows. Honestly? One of the things I like about Tactical Arrow is that it plays more like the early days of Blasting where you pulled from around corners to try and limit the number of mobs coming at you at once and where the point of Power Thrust was to keep the melee mobs away from you long enough for you to blast them. It’s a set designed for that “keep your foes at a distance” playstyle that pre-invention, pre-sustain Blasters had to use if they didn’t want to be “carpet inspectors.” Some people really like that style of play and Tac Arrow is a way to do that style without the need to invest in IO sets because you have many more interesting means of mitigation than just IO-ing yourself to the defense softcaps. Another thing the current Tactical Arrow does extremely well is make up for many of the shortcomings in the Archery primary set. Specifically, it doesn’t require redraw when switching between primary to secondary powers and it adds a reliable source of damage types that are stronger against foes who traditionally resist lethal damage pretty heavily (specifically undead/ghosts and robots). The range nerfs interact particularly badly with Archery in that they disrupt common attack chains where ENA is in the rotation specifically for the energy damage it deals at the same range as the primary attacks. Like one of the previous posters I six-slot my ENA for a damage set (Blaster’s Wrath) and the immobilize is just gravy; it could be a slow instead and I’d still have it in my rotation for the energy damage because robots and CoT spirits are a PITA for the primary Archery attacks.

I'm very glad to see near uniformity in the comments and reactions so far both in not liking the reduced range, but also in being willing to accept further reductions in other stats like mez duration to compensate for keeping the range. Since I'm not one to complain without offering possibly alternatives, I think one way of looking for alternate balance points would be to see what sort of slotting it would take to restore the lost range. For ENA at 50' two generic 50 Range Increase IOs will get 50' back up to nearly 80' (74.85' to be precise). Similarly, two 50 Immobilization Duration IOs increase duration by 83.32%. ENA has a current base immobilization duration of 17.88s... if reduced to 9.75s (17.88s / 1.8332) it would similarly take two level 50 IOs to bring the duration back up to the current live baseline. Heck, round the immobilization duration down to 9.5 or even 9.0 seconds while leaving the range 80' and I think most of the Tac Arrow supporters having issues with this change would be okay with that. Such a change might even be slightly riskier for the TA player because reducing the duration means that... A) it reduces the number of enemies they can keep immobilized at range (with 4s recharge, 1s animation and 17.88s duration it can keep three mobs immobilized at once by cycling through them without ANY slotting... at 9 seconds it would just barely hold two). -and- B) it reduces the degree to which it can be stacked on more resistant targets (at Mag 3 and 17.88s with a cast and recharge time of 1s + 4s you could build up to a steady Mag 9 with bursts of Mag 12 with no slotting required). At 9 seconds you can only mostly maintain Mag 6 (it would drop to Mag 3 for about a second until you got a new stack on it). Now, slotting helps obviously, but it does that for everything and frankly the reduced duration makes it a LOT easier for hostile mobs to close to melee range with a /TA blaster than just having them start from 50' but still being able to immobilize three targets or maintain Mag 9 immobilize with room to spare. * * * * So there's my pitch for an alternative to range reduction... drop the duration of ENA by about 85% (9 to 9.5s), but leave the range at 80'.

It’s also a mainstay for a pure archery build because it’s got a damage type that’s actually strong against the things most resistant to lethal (undead and robots... both tend to be weak to energy). Honestly, I use it more for the energy damage than I do the immobilize. I’d gladly trade immobilize duration (even non-perma without slotting) for bringing the range back up. I’m talking “find a new main” levels of dissatisfaction with the range reduction. I’m fine nerfing other parts (recharge, end cost, damage, mag, duration), but range is THE reason to take tac arrow... to me it’s the set’s shtick in the same way DoT is fire’s, -to-hit is dark’s, and END drain/transfer is electric’s.

If that was the intent then Tactical Arrow would have some strikes using the bow like a melee weapon (see the series "Arrow" for how that can work... probably using staff animations) and not exclusively ranged options. TA was clearly designed to be a bit different from the norm... just like Storm is quite a bit different from the rest of the Support sets. There is room for variation within a concept and TA as the exception that proves the rule keeps Blaster Secondaries from being a dull rut where the only real choices are what special effects you want to look at as you do pretty much what every other blaster does.