summerheat

So I’m pretty sure dialogs were only designed to read mouse input clicks and have no amount of keyboard input, and the cursors on the main login have been impossible to read since forever. It’s little things but I can’t believe I’m the only one irked by the login experience. A simple change to the cursor blinker to be default black instead of white, and rework dialogues to handle basic keyboard input would be immensely helpful.

I'm happy to see the sentiments of a melee ranged supporter are not unique :D I think they might be too good. If they are any more sturdy than a Defender, and they would be, they'd quickly outshine them. Give your buddy fortitude and now you get it too. I.e. you're getting +50% effect to all of your single target buffs (if the AT scale is low enough to compensate you end up with bad ones instead.) Despite the potential for too good (esp. Kinetics as you mentioned) I'm iffy on having them not get a benefit when solo or without an ally to heal. Yep - This is the one thing on which I'm not happy with the result. However, they aren't that much sturdier. Defenders' survivability is a rating 4, so at a 5 it's almost a wash. Any amount of self defense is intended to make the Guardian work for this survival in consideration that they're expected to get into the thick. It might be too good, but it should be something that can be scaled down in tuning. They need SOME form of defensive capability on sets that are heavily dependent with targeted allies, so it might be better as an exception built into the proliferation process than as their inherent. Secondly comes down to how the buffs interact with melee on solo forms, and the third on how the power ratings impact the exact numbers they get. It's hard to say that the support rating drops to 8 or 7 (matching corruptor or controller respectively). I hesitate on that since even buffed normally a tank doesn't throw out as much damage as other melee and I specifically chose the melee rating at 7 to match tanks. I don't want to use the secondary baselines for both sides of the AT, either. If the support was dropped to a 7, I'd swap the melee up to a 9 to give it a bit of oomf, and swap for Melee in the Primary path. Kinetics is causing a lot of problems, and Guardians shouldn't be balanced around any one Powerset. I don't like that Kinetics would become an immediate outlier of "the popular kid" while something like Force Field struggles to stand out of the box. A lot of the sets are so mechanically derived around ranged targets and being squishy in balance that taking away both cause such instability. I suspect this is why no such AT like this existed prior or even made it out of a design phase if it got there. Guardians need something to give them a minor defense/resistance for soloing, but as something that doesn't overpower on a team of 8. Vigilance diminished in effectiveness with larger teams... Perhaps Coverage should act just like Vigilance, but applies a resist buff using the same table as Vigilance's damage buff. What do you think?

Behold, my melee/support AT you asked for, but my take on it. Genies have to have some fun! The Guardian Playstyle: Support/Striker Powersets: Buff (Primary) / Melee (Secondary) Innate: Coverage. For the Guardian to do their job effectively, they are often tasked with being in the thick of things. As such, they often need a little bit of the protection they offer to their allies. As such, when applying supportive (buff) powers to allies, the Guardian receives 50-75% effective feedback upon themselves. Additionally, as the Guardian finds herself surrounded, she receives a small max-HP boost per foe to allow her to continue performing her duties. Guardian Stats (?) Survivability: 5 Melee Damage: 7 Ranged Damage: 3 Crowd Control: 4 Support: 9 Pets: 2 Primary Powersets: all known except Trick Arrow.(!) Secondary Powersets: all scrapper except titan weapon.(!) Limits @ L50: HP Base: 1204.8 (from Stalker) HP Maximum: 2088.3 (from Stalker) Damage Resistance: 75% (Standard) Damage: 200% at L1, 400% at L21+ (Standard) Defense: 97.76% at L1, 200.38% at L21+ (Scrapper/Stalker) Regeneration: 2,100% at L1, 2,500% at L20+ (Brute / Tanker)* Recovery: 10.42% / second (Defender) Unless otherwise specified follows the “all others” standard of values. Damage and dam. resist are specified because they’re such big deals for play-style impact with Defense and others. Ancillary/Patron: The Guardian should duplicate Scrapper/Stalker for initial proliferation and patron coverage. These gave minor control and ranged abilities suitable for the purpose of ancillary sets on melee striker toons. Notes: (?)The scoring was kept close to the current distributions and has a total of 30. Support is weaker than a defender, higher than a corruptor, which is higher than other buff secondary classes. Survivability needed to take a hit to compensate for the support shield sources, mixed in with Coverage adding to that compensation. With melee at a 7, it’s the same output as a tank, but debuff sets would further provide improved numbers from baseline that aren’t immediately perceived in a straight numbers comparison. (!)Trick Arrow applies a significant amount of “ranged assumption” in play style, includes weapon swapping/drawing and other specific abilities risk a high gimmick feel that may become problematic when centered in melee. Similar justification to trick arrow for buffing, but also has very slow animations, slower than any other set already paired with a buff powerset from other archetypes. *the regen rates for scrappers / stalkers is actually higher, which broke my rule of meshing defender caps with scrapper caps in balancing. Because of the supportive nature of sets like empathy and kinetics and a higher proclivity for self heals in buff sets, (should this be attempted) I recommend testing at this level first before including Guardian at those higher rates. Further, the brute is set lower, and is intended to holding agro... Thoughts: there are some potentially powerful combinations that will shine on farming maps, specifically kinetics/spines, while other riskier combinations might prove counter-intuitive. Some powersets might be too powerful with the melee factor (stares at kinetics) but others would be largely ambivalent (empathy) in melee vs ranged effectiveness. Coverage seemed odd. I wanted some way for buff powersets that gave shields to shore up the weakness that ST buffs have re: source, but there are fewer powersets that have this than ones that do. Also, there needed to be other ways of benefiting from being in melee without defenses, which led to the HP buff aspect. It’s a start...

The damage output is definitely lower, but I bet the damage cap is lower as well. I don’t think it’s 400% like a blaster. When I got my fire sentinel to 32, I took inferno, popped a tray of reds and yellows, jumped into a mob and...died embarrassingly. Mob showed < 25% damage taken for all. Clearly I did wrong and didn’t understand this lower damage output was so severe, nor had I done much focus on my defensive powers yet. Whatever the case, it is NOT offensive and I don’t think it’s meant to be. It seems like a solution to blappers that chose the worst of both worlds and somehow makes it work. I think the weirdness is the balance. Unlike all other archetypes I’ve played, sentinel seems to require even pickings from primary and secondary. It might have found this unintended balance that relies heavily on primary/secondary specialty synergies. When built right at L50 with the correct sets and bonuses, pool power selections, it can do some stupid-crazy impressive things (I haven’t seen the build, but short answer: bio armor). I do think the AT overall needs some additional editing, but I don’t know that what we have is that far from the desired mark. I just have to figure out how to play it better. It’s NOT a blaster, and it’s not a corruptor. It’s a sentinel. Between the shorter range and lower damage it’s gonna get hit more, and it’s built for it.

I think Throw Sand is the only one I’m not planning to take. I like the set overall, and it meshes well with the concept for my dual pistols/martial blaster. I do miss some of the self-buff utility I got with energy manipulation, but it’s not too shoddy. Was reach for the limit at one time a click? It seems weird to not have a build-up click but I stopped playing before i24 and well before had stopped rolling new toons. I like that it’s auto, but change is weird. Reaction time... I don’t have it on that much, but I like it. Slot for slows makes it nice when I get surrounded, and the alpha strike of reaction time -> Burst of Speed -> nova, which takes out quite a few before I do as most blasters do. What I DO absolutely like in the set is the amount of knock “back” aspects, which I’ve heavily relied on being a soft control in my rotation. Usually I can dominate a fight with ranged attacks until they’re close to melee, knock them around with storm kick and dragons tail, finishing them with ki push to return to the ranged and (usually) finish them off. Inner will gets underused in my build, but going up against rikti and Malta are reminding me what happens when I forget it’s there. In those occasions, it absolutely shifts the balance in combat in my favor, as their hard controls get shrugged off and my soft controls start taking effect.

I want to remember that my old handle was @Summer Heat, but I have doubt on that now. Summer Heat was the fire/energy blaster main. Had a few others but they weren’t really known to those that didn’t know Summer. Dunno who took the name on Torch, but it’s not me. Went a new direction for the new universe.