Shin Magmus

The spawns are definitely using the wrong attribute somewhere, causing level-less enemies to spawn with level50 HP. Advice: lowbies can all go home.

Yeah I didn't even mention that Seismic Blast is locked out of most of its effectiveness if you ever have to leave the ground, whether you like Hoverblasting or because you actually need to do so for the content (like Seed of Hamidon). I mentioned in passing jumping to temporarily disable Seismic Shockwaves, but didn't bring up the weakness that you can't even get the effect ever if you're not grounded. Thanks for bringing that up Amra. The top-tier Blast sets that currently outperform Seismic Blast handily, also do not have this ground-only weakness: which doesn't make much sense from a game design standpoint again. Things with weaknesses or limitations are generally supposed to have a strength in exchange, in order to balance out having the weakness in the first place.

I don't want to go too far into this as a side topic, but Sentinels are very unfortunate to be a victim of this bizarre design rule: and you also noted how powers like Full Auto and Rain of Arrows have to be changed on Sentinels to compensate. My purposed fixes to bring Seismic Blast up to par, mostly treat it as a regular set and disregard Sentinels because there's no fixing them. We are post-buff/rework on Sentinels but they still underperform, still have that weird Nuke rule, still have intentional nerf powers like Chilling Ray, and still have no actual role on teams. It's safe to assume that the devs are happy with this level of Sent performance (since they chose not to address these things while making sweeping changes to the AT), so I've given up hope on Sentinels ever getting improved and just don't play them. It's hard to care about them anymore, sorry.

For direct comparisons, do you want something as simple and linear as a Pylon test where ATs can only use their Ranged Attack set? I can go ahead and make some builds on the Beta server and have the strong sets use their Blaze/BiB/TK Thrust 3x as often as Seismic Blast is able to use Enhanced Stalagmite, if video evidence is what you're talking about. In general, my experience is from playing Seismic Blast compared to playing... well Fire and Ice Blast really. But a lot of the experience is technically anecdotal but also multiplied by so many encounters playing with other people using the set. So I've seen time and time again: people casting Meteor without KBtoKD slotted (yeeting enemies directly through cave map ceilings and out of bounds), and even people in the teams asking the Seismic Blast user to "please stop using that power." Or I've been crusing along, queuing up Seismic Force only to realize that I just procced Seismic Shockwaves, then accidentally wasting the buff that I would've much rather spent on Enhanced Stalagmite. I mentioned that in the write-up but I learned the bunnyhop strategy from someone else in-game, who has similar issues with Seismic Blast and who had developed the counterplay to accidentally wasting Seismic Shockwaves. Some of my points are already direct comparisons though, with numbers cited; I directly compare the effects of Meteor to the effects of several Standard Nukes (i.e. not Full auto, Hail of Bullets, etc), and it just comes out worse than every single directly comparable power. Those Nukes all share the same base dmg anyways and are clearly all fine with strong beneficial secondary effects. I don't understand why some of these Seismic Blast powers have the numbers that they do. When you do side-by-side comparisons, it is genuinely confusing that Meteor exists as it does currently. I cannot see the reasoning or theory behind why something that is objectively going to be more difficult to land (and easier to waste) in combat would only deal the same base dmg as an instant hit Psychic Wail that has a 100% chance for a mag3 Stun, and doesn't send enemies flying away.

The Payoff for landing a slow, delayed AoE should obviously be superior damage compared to regular AoE attacks without such a weakness. RoA and Meteor can exist, but they need numbers to make them worth existing.

I'm not disagreeing either, but the reason that Storm Blast is mid is a combination of arbitrary, deliberately added-by-devs "Replace" flags, and arbitrary, deliberately added-by-devs "Lockout" periods (that heavily punish multiple Storm Blast users on the same team). Storm Blast effectively has the potential to be good, but someone took it into a warehouse to gouge out its eye and break both of its legs. As for why that someone did something so cruel, we will never know (because the Powers Devs don't talk to us).

The devs already believe that having -fly on most attacks, and the mechanic required being grounded, is unique enough. Also most of the attacks that do -fly also do -jump height, which is extremely unique by Ranged Attack set standards and forces targets hit to stay grounded with you. Whether the players feel the same way... probably will never matter to the devs. Love it or hate it, that's the set's identity. Lastly while minor -Def might be "dull", it's also literally top-tier because it adds 2x dmg procs and 1x -res proc option to an attack. Any set that has a random -Def debuff added to it jumps up in objective power when you're talking about minmaxed builds. That's exactly why Blaster Fire Sword suddenly being able to slot Achilles Heel -Res proc in the patch where they buffed Fire Melee, was the mandatory one-per-major-update stealthbuff to Fire/Fire Blasters.

That's fair, have a nice day.

A foreword from the author... Hi there, I'm the Mr. Shin whose unofficial main is now a Seismic/Fire Blaster. You may have seen this Magmoid creature of lava and hatred; I did put a lot of time into it. I currently use this character to play Seismic Blast because I strongly enjoy the aesthetics and core design of the powerset, especially with the Lava texture power customization. Unfortunately, the set has SEVERE ISSUES which prevent it from performing as well as it should. Blasters are pretty overpowered (citation needed), and Fire Manipulation is the most damaging powerset in the game thanks to combining 2 strong "Damage Auras", well known for being part of the Fire/Fire Blaster overwhelming dominance. I simply picked Fire Manipulation to carry the poor performance of Seismic Blast, allowing me to enjoy the character and still have decent overall performance. This strategy worked subjectively for me... but only on Blasters. How is Seismic Blast on Defenders, Corruptors, and Sentinels? Those ATs have to rely much more on the powerset by itself for their damage, and the results are not good. Seismic Blast is one of the least popular sets in the game currently, and while we can all wager guesses at the reasons, I'd like to point out a few glaring issues with the set and suggest simple fixes to them. I'm not saying that these changes would immediately improve both the viability and popularity of Seismic Blast but... no wait, I am absolutely saying that. Video Example Evidence Seismic Shockwaves KD is suppressed for 10s any time the target is knocked down by any source: Upthrust CD is never longer than 6s in the worst-case scenario on my endgame build, even with 0 Recharge slotted into the power and 5 procs slotted instead: Fixed Seismic Blast By: Shin_Rekkoha (Shin Magmus) Rebalance Seismic Shockwaves No matter how you slice it, Seismic Blast is a builder/spender set. Both Stalagmite and to a lesser extent Rock Shards in their current form are powers that are not worth using without Seismic Shockwaves, hereafter referred to as "SS" or I will go insane. When a Seismic player gets SS, then immediately spend it on the chance to use either A: a single target attacks slightly better than Blaze... or B: a decent secondary AoE that's not as good as Upthrust. Immediately after spending SS, the player forfeits the chance to spend it on the choice they didn't pick. Because of this mechanic having "opportunity cost" and the powers generally not being worth using without SS, many players commonly skip Rock Shards since they always spend SS on Enhanced Stalagmite instead... because it hits like a truck. If you can't use SS on both, one simply almost never gets used in practice. So with all that said, and the general understanding that players will be instantly spending SS in normal gameplay... that means that a player who wants to chill and sit on their SS, keeping it for the knockdown effect... should get some sort of useful reward right? Right? You're giving up a lot of damage by not instantly spending SS on your Spenders, and you're also wasting all the enhancements you have slotted in those powers by not using them during the time you either don't have SS, or are sitting on SS to use it for the Knockdown. So what does SS give you in this case? It gives you a shitty Knockdown with a lockout period of 10s, that dynamically updates and re-locks-out any time the target is knocked down from any source. Seismic Shockwaves is REPREHENSIBLY, EMBARASSINGLY, DISGUSTINGLY WEAK by any reasonable metric. It's mind-blowing to me that the effect even exists in the game as it does; common gameplay situations will often knock down a target so frequently that Seismic Shockwaves will never do anything because enemies will never achieve the required condition for the full 10 seconds. Thank goodness most players will be spending SS instantly, so that they are spared the knowledge of seeing how pathetic it really is. - Tick Rate: 0.2 (5 checks per second) - Current: 5% chance for KD / LOCK OUT: disabled IF: Target Sleeping, disabled IF: Target time-since-knocked less than or equal to 10s - New: 4% chance for KD / LOCK OUT: disabled IF: Target Sleeping, second condition deleted Rebalance Seismic Force Seismic Force consuming SS is detrimental in almost all cases and never actually helpful to the player. If I carelessly try to use my "Aim" power: Seismic Force, I will accidentally waste my SS and be robbed of the chance to use Enhanced Stalagmite. THIS FEELS TERRIBLE WHEN IT HAPPENS, and has led several players (including myself), to build the muscle memory to habitually jump briefly every time we use Seismic Force. Being Grounded is a requirement for Seismic Blast Enhanced effects, so leaving the ground temporarily disables the ability to consume SS and get those effects. This ensures that you can never accidentally waste SS, and the mechanic reactivates quickly after touching the ground again. Seismic Force's benefit when it wastes SS is also insultingly bad: being nothing but a one-time instant reduction in the CDs of all actively recharging powers. My slowest recharging power is Upthrust, which has a maximum CD in worst-case scenarios of only 6s. In theory, the current effect of Seismic Force could be used to increase the frequency of a Meteor, but that's of little benefit. My current build completely skips Meteor, because it is an actively detrimental joke power, but we'll get to that next. Hopefully you can see the problem with Seismic Force based on the picture I've painted. - Current: Seismic Force consumes SS to reduce the CDs of all actively recharging Seismic Blast powers - New: Seismic Force instantly grants SS, allowing the player to use 2 Enhanced powers back-to-back by using Seismic Force in between them Rebalance Meteor There's only one way I can honestly write this section: Meteor is a failure of The Powers Team at basic game design and balance. Most Nukes in the game have a secondary effect that is purely beneficial, varying by individual powerset. Inferno in Fire Blast has no secondary effect (such as a debuff or mez) so it deals more damage in exchange. These are established, comparative, logical rules between the powersets. I will call the majority of Nukes "Standard Nukes": powers which do the same damage as each other but less than Inferno. Standard Nukes are very good! Atomic Blast is a reliable Hold and accepts Hold procs. Dreadful Wail is a reliable Stun that also inflicts -Res. Blackstar eviscerates enemy Tohit chances for a whopping 30s. The weakest of the bunch is Nova, but Energy Blast has its own list of Issues and Nova isn't out of place in the set. All of these powers deal the same damage as Meteor. So what does Meteor do? - Meteor is cast on a huge delay, landing roughly 5s after being cast. All other Standard Nukes deal their damage instantly (at the end of their cast animation). - Meteor deals Smashing/Fire damage, but only 25% of it is Fire damage. This means Meteor deals 75% of its damage as one of the most resisted damage types in the game: worse than all other Standard Nukes. - Meteor does not have any beneficial secondary effect, unlike all other Standard Nukes. - Meteor causes massive Mag Knockback as a detrimental secondary effect, but upward using a "new knock vector system" added by the devs. This causes Meteor to throw enemies higher and farther, over short walls that would normally stop Knockback and up into the ceilings and out of bounds on cave maps. In exchange for these weaknesses, someone decided that Meteor should only deal the same damage as all other Standard Nukes. This doesn't make sense, and nobody can make it make sense. Of all the things in Seismic Blast that need addressing, Meteor sits at the very top of the list. We can never know how or why such a bafflingly bad power is the capstone of Seismic Blast, sitting unmatched in a tier that can only be described as: "Nova, but the Knockback is even worse, and it deals worse damage types, and it has a huge delay before it even hits which can cause you to waste the power." - Current: Meteor is REALLY BAD - New: Meteor is now affected by SS, separated into Meteor and Enhanced Meteor: both versions of the power deal increased damage relative to current version. When used without SS, Meteor will instantly grant the user 6 stacks of Seismic Pressure (3x the rate of regular attacks) and only deals Knockdown. When used with SS, Enhanced Meteor will consume the effect but deal increased damage and have the Knockdown replaced with the current massive Knockback. This allows beanbags players who enjoy the current version of Meteor to retain access to the KB, enabling player choice and hurting no one. The powers are broken down below: New Meteor Damage ratio changed from 75%/25% to 50%/50% Smashing and Fire Damage increased by 20% (1.20x current Meteor damage) Knockback changed to Knockdown (100% chance) Grants the user 6 stacks of Seismic Pressure (granted on cast, not on Meteor landing) Enhanced New Meteor Damage ratio changed from 75%/25% to 50%/50% Smashing and Fire Damage increase by 25% over non-Enhanced version (1.50x current Meteor damage) Inflicts massive vectored Knockback, unchanged from current (can still slot KBtoKD IOs) Consumes SS and ends the Shockwaves Major damage buff to Entomb Even outside of the more important and impactful fixes above, the DPA of Seismic Blast powers as a whole is undertuned. The Powers Team very clearly used "The Formula" to calculate Encase (T1) and Shatter (T2) DPA, to make both of these powers pathetic and weak, not to be used at lv50 except as filler, only when you have nothing else available to use. This design philosophy is consistent with some other powersets, even if it isn't much fun for the player. However, Entomb (T4 power, "T3 Blast") deals significantly less damage than it should and actually has lower DPA than Shatter. Entomb should have its damage value buffed by 65%, bringing it up closer to the level of powers such as Freeze Ray, Bitter Ice Blast, Telekinetic Blast, and Blaze: though still comfortably below them. After this buff, Entomb would have 79% of the DPA of Bitter Ice Blast as an example comparison. This change would cause Seismic Blast to actually have 2 good always-available single target attacks: Entomb and Tombstone (The Snipe). Remember, Seismic Blast characters cannot use Enhanced Stalagmite very often: often only getting SS once every 4-5 attacks. The set currently only has one good single target attack to use outside of Enhanced Stalagmite, and with this suggested buff it would have 2. This buff might seem extreme, but it also accurately portrays just how weak Seismic Blast currently is. That's it, that's my suggested list of changes to fix Seismic Blast. In summary, these changes were: rebalance Seismic Shockwaves, rebalance Seismic Force (remove SS interaction), rebalance Meteor (add SS interaction), and rebalance Encase by massively increasing its damage (all other powers in the set are unchanged). I've reasoned that these changes make the set simultaneously perform better and feel better to play: both factors that would increase its popularity. A huge part of my motivation for this post is my time playing Seismic Blast for myself, and dealing with its issues in my own gameplay experience. As always, I appreciate your opinions and feedback on these posts. Look forward to the set I cover next month!

I would also really like it if Storm Blast was better. The ideas in the set are fine, and it matches the mechanical theme of Storm Summoning, which is that it ramps up and gets better in longer fights, vs enemies with tons of HP that facilitate the long setup. My issue is that both of these sets have the weakness of powers being disproportionately bad vs weak enemies and on fast teams. Lightning Storm and Category 5: both powers that theoretically can inflict great dmg... do very little in a fight that ends in 10 seconds. On top of general buffs to Storm Blast, I think the baseline of what the set *should* be capable of doing needs to be adjusted. In the ideal conditions and long fights where Storm Blast users get to fight an Advanced Mode AV or Reichsman with hundreds of thousands of HP... I honestly believe that Storm Blast should outDPS every other set (including Fire Blast). This is only fair from a game design perspective, since 60%... 70%... sometimes even 80% of the potential damage of your Storm pets is lost on common encounters. It doesn't make game design sense or balance sense for a set with extreme weaknesses vs common scenarios, to not have proportionate strengths vs uncommon scenarios. The Bad in Storm Blast far outweighs the Good and that's really just not fun for anyone involved.

K, they already gave you an actual challenge with tankier enemies: go play Advanced Mode. I know you don't, just by the way you phrased all of your comments. Go play 4* ITF and tell me how well running in and nuking on your Blaster worked. Oh you... you don't actually engage with the hard content, but still cry for nerfs? Yeah no.

Agreed with The Goddess of all Kheldians, having a pretty and customized personal testing range, that fulfills the exact same criteria as the 3 testing Pylons in RWZ, would just be a buff to the game.

+1, the Widow "hold arm / wrist-mounted dart shoot" animation is one of the best animations in the game. So many powers should have this as an alternate animation or even just the default one: pschoof.

Coming to a CoH near you: varying weather! 5% chance of the skybox changing to Fire Base Zulu / Cascade Archipelago: demonic hellstorm.

Midnight for me as well. If it makes you feel any better, 99% of people who enter a CC will lose, so you're not missing out on much.

Where are the options to take Ancillary Beanbag, the best power in the game? This is an outrage to Beanbag fans everywhere!

Wake me up when they add Beanbag Mastery.

Insanity. This would just result in melees being more reliant on external buffs like Speed Boost/AM/Schmeletrical Schmircuit/Ageless Destiny, but they'd still run all their toggles. I am not sure you understand how badly this wouldn't work, but it would make melees Tankier and thus be a series of massive buffs to them, rather than nerfs.

Fascinating. My argument against Tar Patch being able to miss, is that it's fucking stupid. Tar Patch doesn't logically make sense as a power that can miss, and other versions of Tar Patch can't miss. Epic/Ancillary pools also need to be correctly balanced against each-other, since that's the decision that all players make when they select one pool over another. Dominator Sleet doesn't need any Accuracy enhanced to work, but Dominator Tar Patch does.

In what world should Dominators need to slot Accuracy into their Tar Patch when nobody else does, and when Tar Patch competes with (and loses to) Sleet in another epic on Doms: which doesn't need any Accuracy slotting at all? It's insane how bad Tar Patch is on them. 80% of players are just going to keep taking Sleet.

Bump cus I tested this too, and it results in the game lying to the player about what their Alpha slot is doing. You'd need to be very observant while testing to know that you aren't getting the Range from the Alpha, and I bet this bug is currently tricking/affecting several players builds.

There's a 2nd part to this bug, even if it's a text error. Irradiated Ground is DETOGGLED when you get mezzed instead of simply getting suppressed. This is inconsistent with 99.997% of toggles in the game currently after HC did a consistency patch on everything, and it does come up as soon as you do something like that Mapserver Event that just happened. IG constantly needing to be manually toggled back on is incredibly annoying.

But we can get a bugfix for the almost totally useless Brute's Fury ATO proc "soon" hopefully... right devs? I mean, surely fixing the bug related to flags on the proc can't be that hard and isn't too much to ask?

This is beating a dead horse at this point and should move to its own topic. I'm going to reiterate that how CoH/CoV used to work is no longer relevant at all, and won't be going forward.

But that history doesn't matter anymore. All that matters is fixing the problems now, and the way the game works now. New players to the game literally don't care about anything you just said as it has no effect on them and they can't go back to the game pre-Going Rogue. That's why we're pitching solutions to the problem.