Novacat

It doesn't seem to actually taunt according to the ingame window, but a lot of things don't appear in those details if they're caused in some indirect fashion like "that mine is actually a pet" or "multiple modes"(snipes) and other stuff like that. That said, it lowers their to-hit a bit, handily speeds up your recharge, and you've got a pair of PBAoEs in the set that help there too. Paired with the right set, things might be clustering in the middle of a damage and mezzing storm.

Since you're pairing it with /Dev I'd suggest making sure you've got a second hold available in your Epics later (if you're needing to find some room for pool powers you can delay getting Abyssal gaze a bit for that reason). If you have something like Char, it helps ensure you can actually hold bosses and the such, whereas a single mag-3 generally isn't enough for anything above many-but-not-all Lts.

Just because you pre-emptively accuse others doesn't mean you aren't lying. And you, are lying, just like the "it's fine, lrn2ply" scrappers used to do on the Blaster forums whenever they were arguing against any sort of fixes to the latter AT no matter how bad it got.

It's also important to remember that resist (which these sets get) is far, far less valuable than protection. If you have 100% Hold Resist, you cut hold durations in half. If you have 4 Mag Hold Protection, it not only takes at least 5 Mag (most are either 2 or 3) that actually hits for you to be held, but as soon as the older magnitudes which hit you run out of duration you're free again as well.

Where does one find the damage scale for each power to plug in, though? Because the damage output doesn't match a lot of the time. Take wolf spider's Single Shot for example. SDF gives a result of 1. The AT has a multiplier of 1.000. At level 50 it does 55.61. Charged Bolts on a Blaster would be 1, with an AT multiplier of 1.125. It does 62.56. So it's not a straight "level x this", there's a 5.61 (which x1.125 does add up to 6.31) tacked on for those two Tier 1s. Likewise, Lightning Bolt has 1.64 according to the formula, but on a blaster does 102.6. Do ALL attacks have a base of 5.61 that's separately multiplied as per the scale and AT and added the attack's original result? Is it perhaps only partially applied (even after the above and area multipliers) for nukes? Does that actually hold for other levels than 50 after 20 when the AT scales are full applied?

It also hit Radiation's first attack quite hard.

Was anyone able to figure out (maybe if we summon Arcanaville) the exact meaning of that 'standard damage design formula'? Can't help but feel LRM's 240s would at least place it at odds with that - it has 165.5% the recharge of a nuke after all. Still, much as that's the power I personally want to see fixes on the most, it's body armor that's probably the most in need of some repairs.

If I may suggest: What would best serve your wishes is not a sorcery blast/melee primary. Instead... It's alternate animations. Kind of like how many of the blast sets have two forms (like for psionic blast where it's either from your head or from your hand, or you do that weird hug thing for fireballs vs the normal blast, etc). Magic stuff a-la-Strange, and an optional "from weapon" for things like blast attacks.

Piercing Rounds is a lot like Piercing Beam. They may seem a little quirky at first but if you take the time to learn them well they're incredibly valuable. Since each counts as a slightly less efficient (bit higher cast time and endurance/recharge) Tier 3 ('heavy') blast, in effect this gives you a second one, though marginally less preferable against a single target priority-wise than your real T3... But there's that -Res both pack which mean you'll want to fire it early instead. If you hit even ONE more target you've doubled your damage - which is equivalent to catching 4.6 targets with Bullet Rain. You're doing proper single target damage to a boss, and probably shredding half the health off one of his Lts despite your "single target" shot. And they've been mildly deres'd. I've got the beam version on my main and it's the first thing I put a 6th slot in. Heavily concentrated AoE when I need it. A perfectly serviceable heavy single target attack when I need it. More I used it the handier it got, quickly finishing the harder targets where the bigger AoEs have already dropped most of the henchman chaff. It is a line attack, and it is wonderful.

That's a terrible name. The idea itself, it's not like I don't understand the concept/appeal, but it would probably lead to nothing good execution-wise. Scrapcode-tangle that is most late-life MMOs aside, unless it were a specific set of powers designed for each individual AT, you'd end up with some serious fuckery. Because otherwise say it's limited to "just" the first two powers of secondary sets/values. What if my Blaster grabs High Pain Tolerance or worse yet Bane Spider Armor (hey it's technically a branch-off level 1)? How hard is it to take down a Tanker with HPT AND Inexhaustible? and how worthless an upgrade is it for a beam rifle defender to grab power bolt as his big new special?

Violently at that. Whereby you might wanna wait ten seconds for them to walk away before popping a wakie, RotP you hit as soon as you can to catch as many in the blast as possible.

No no I have no issues with using regular spread (I think it's radius around 15-20? They don't have to be all that bunched up but it won't reached the most spread-out lots) I was talking about disintegrate spreading from a hit on a non-disintegrated non-spread-to enemy. As in, solo, in an instance, first attack on a fresh mob, see "disintegrate spread" pop up. Which I thought is what the OP was referring to. Happens quite a bit on Justin but I only recall one such hiccup total on live.

Well, big female hero (Huge but with more of a bust and slightly less huge-man voices?) is alright, but what would really rock is all them vehicles.

Cryo Ray feels like the odd man out as well. It's an inferior model to the other epic holds, and has nothing special to show for it. If it had something, anything, to give it its own niche. To make someone somewhere go "I want that one" even if just a bit. As for the armor, dumb thought but what if it was an inferior version of the bane-spider armor? Like 2% all resists, Mag 1 protection and 5% Max HP?

There's the recharge to damage part but I've always wondered; what about the cast time component? Was that ever included for damage calculations in any fashion? Because say you have something that takes 3 seconds to fire off, that's a very different DPA an DPS from a 1.32s power. If both are the same, that 3s one better be worth it!

Body Armor: It's auto-category made it acceptable back before i24 where the lack of endurance cost was an important component, but the values can no longer make up for this in a world of IOs AND Sustains. This is in part because Body Armor not only has the lowest values - it (perhaps more importantly) offers NO protection whatsoever other than +Res Smash/Lethal. Its closest analogue, Temporary Invulnerability in Force Mastery, may be a toggle, but offers 21% base to both - 240% the base value of Body Armor. All other resist types either offer more than double the resistance to at least three damage types (such as Smash/Lethal/Energy) OR a 10.5% base defense buff against two or three AND resist to one or two more types to add to it. Cryo Freeze Ray: Worst of the epic holds. Possible Redraw aside, it's also the weakest. All other blaster ancillary holds (and there's six of them) have a combination of higher damage (second worst damage is Shocking Bolt at about 5.5x the output of CFR while knockout blow hits for a devastating 198 base at 50), same or longer duration, longer range, and/or additional special effects, such as Web Cocoon which while non-damaging has a nasty -50% recharge and speed (and kills flight like most web things). Several are +2 endurance cost base, but that matters not, and Char stands out with a 1.32s cast, 68.82 damage, 14.3 base duration and a range of 80ft Sleep Grenade: A bit iffy but can compare to flash-freeze. .4s faster cast time, 6s longer duration and 20ft longer range, but half the damage and a 15ft rather than 25ft radius. The duration can help a bit against the resistances on bosses and the like, but it's harder to catch a large group as well. Still, in some ways one of the better powers here by virtue of not being a half-assed heavily nerfed excuse version of another power. Surveillance: Set isn't really worth it for just this, but it's a good power, I think everyone agrees LRM: Desperately needs to get at least a partial snipe treatment. It's not actually that bad a power overall - though smash/lethal it's still a long range AoE with the damage of two fireballs, but that 6s cast time (with 4s interrupt and no access to interrupt reduction in the Sets due to its targeted AoE category) really makes you feel its age as a power especially over on Justin with the beta snipe changes in play. -Also, if there's any way to port the council launcher or any of the missile launchers (on various mechs) as a 'weapon' for this, it would make everyone's day because goddamn. I can't even have a different gun from my beam rifle selection for this either, trying to choose forces both sets into one weapon costumewise. So, all in all, the set needs some help. The first two powers are in critical condition and easily can turn folks from the set because they don't make the remainder worth it, while the capstone isn't actually near death much as it may have lost some of its lustre there.

While I've not seen Disintegrate Spread more than maybe once a week ago on live happening without disintegrate when solo (do keep in mind if in a team that it WILL work off other people's disintegrations so multiple beam users on a team can really spread the love for each-other) as some one-off "wait a second I didn't...", it IS something that's happening a lot on the beta right now. Also bugged on beta however is that disintegrate spread takes about half a second after the hit, and only if the target's still alive by then, which is a problem I pointed out especially in regards to Lancer Shot and Penetrating Ray's newly improved spread chances currently on Justin. The noise though, I thought was the normal sound for cutting beam, so, if that's a bug, color me "all of the time" on that.

In terms of straightforward capabilities, what they say on the tin, it's not a bad combination. As a blapper, you'll have a series of PBAoEs to work from, can slot Short Circuit and Power Sink for severe drain if used together (two 50 IOs and nothing else for those powers adds up to -128.32% endurance drain and something like -366% recovery to keep it there), that's before any other powers or drains or anything. You get two holds, two sleeps and two stuns (the latter of which are AoE) so you can build for a decent amount of mezzing that'll stack with any epic pool you choose. Thunderous Blast is one of the ranged nukes and this is a good thing. Granted they don't hurt quite as much but they're way easier to set up and place and thus are very *usable* The less fun parts, however... 1) Forget range. You've got an effective combat reach of about 12 feet if you want to use all of that drain. 2) If you're not meleeing, you're low on single target damage as you're using AoEs a lot and even the epic pools may not change this too much 3) Due in part to point 1, your nuke loses some of its value of being ranged: you're in the middle of things anyways so in many ways you're just losing out on the damage compared to a point-blank. Now, here's where the numbers probably decline. If I take Energy Manipulation, all of my primary's end drains are significantly stronger. Sure I lose the one-two punch of power-sink and short-circuit, but Thunderous Blast with two drain IOs just became 145.4% all on its own already, SC itself is now in the 90s, ball lightning reaches 18.34% with two IOs... And if I took Mu Mastery, Electrifying Fences is in the 40s too, or Electrical Mastery's EMP for a cone, a hold, and another 131+% from two IOs with power-boosted EMPulse. Or what if I don't care about drain except for SC, Thunderous and... one more thing to top'em off? It's not like AVs and Giant Monsters are all that affected by drain anyways without several other electricals running around, so as long as elite bosses and below are totally offline, right? What if I took Tactical Arrow for all of those self-buffs? ESD offers a 55% base drain - easily dragged above 115%. They're under 3 mag of hold as you leap in to short-circuit, tossing your ball lightning mid-jump 'fore you land. As long as LTs, Minions and Bosses are all dry, which is easily achieved with those other non-/Elec options, that's the grand majority of the protection and usefulness of drain right there. So that means there's at least two other good options even if you do want to drain things with Electrical. But, if you want to drain and blap, the thought of keeping a whole bunch of fuel-depleted victims in close proximity as your lighting field taps them and your regen/recovery-type Sustain helps keep them stunned and the biggest guy in the area gets put to sleep right afterwards if that wasn't enough to shut him up? Elec/Elec/Elec can jump in there with extreme resistances (except psionics so do slot some IO sets for that) and AoE things to disruption then death.

On Live. Single Shots at Level 1. Corruptor Level 1: 9.49 x2 = 18.98. Apparently a .72 for 11s (disintegrate spread? it's certainly not a regular inflicted DoT from the power) adds 4.34 to this for 23.32 average damage if it ticks the damage 6.02 times in total Blaster Level 1: 10.25 (hits for 10.24) and 1.02 for 11s makes 16.76 average damage. 6.52 damage would tick 6.39 times though on that same duration if that was it? 7.9% harder hit than the Corruptor. The corruptor on-hit damage certainly isn't 2/3s the blaster's here, though what may be the spread ticks do seem to be 70% of the blaster version. And then Charged Shot. This time level 2: Corruptor: Average Damage 37.99. 16.67 for each of Scourge and base hit. Alleges 2.50 on target if disintegrated which would bring us to 35.84. 0.77 (up at level 2 from 0.72) for 11s would be worth... 2.15 damage? Blaster: Average Damage 25.04. 18.07 damage for the attack, 2.71 if disintegrated, and "1.16 for 11s" so here the 11s would be worth 4.26 extra damage. Also 18.07 is 8.4% harder a hit. That "x for 11s" is all over the place in terms of what it alleges to promise to the average damage. Meanwhile, on Justin: Level 1: Corruptor Single Shot: 9.5 x2 = 19, A much cleaner-to-read (that's nice) declaration of 6 ticks of .95 Blaster Single Shot: 10.25, claiming to add 6 ticks. Level 50 Corruptor Single Shot: 108.44 (41.71 base, 41.71 scourge). Promises for 6 ticks of 4.17 over 5.5s and the numbers add up. Blaster Single Shot: 100.10, Damage 62.56. Promises 6 ticks of 6.26 over 5.5s so that adds up at least. -Disintegrate spread is quite bugged here, as the first hit of using nothing but single shot actually caused spread to get announced and start ticking So it appears that the damage scaling on both Live and Test gives Corruptors a lot more than 2/3 of a blaster's firepower at level 1, but grows into the proper ratio over time which would explain low level test results. The Live numbers in the detailed boxes are also completely jumbled due not (or not-only) to Scourge being auto-added in but a badly calculated disintegration spread that's tacked on to all powers separate from on-hit disintegration damage buffs.

Also upped on the stun-front is Overcharge, but it's quite unfortunate really that -regen% and -Res% are not affected. -Def% is easily dropped in value by IO levels of to-hit and accuracy bonuses too so Beam gets very very little out of Power Boost as a whole.

The detail-window displayed damage doesn't include scourge. 0.750 vs 1.125 would be If 92.62 is 1.125, 1.0 would be 81.44 and 0.75 would be 61.08 (which doubled by scourge would mean a listing of 122.16). 99.26 would be double of 49.63. The actual damage results don't match the displays either - they certainly show the corruptor in action (at least on those sets) doing a proper 2/3s before either scourge or defiance are taken into account but they're also pretty much unrelated to their offered values: Single Shot: 99.26 is 188.45% . 280.59 is 306.25% of the lower 91.62 Charged Shot: 306.78 is 207.1% . Blaster does 382% of listed Cutting Beam: 171.9 is 244.97% of 70.17 while blaster's got 490% of what the detail box announces it would do. Piercing Beam: same % as Cutting Beam at least - 245% and 490% respectively. Overcharge: 294% and 420% respectively. Now obviously damage is gonna be multiplied when shooting a level 2 buckshot, but there'd be consistency against the same target in such multipliers if the details had anything at all to do with the results wouldn't there? Instead I'm seeing corruptor detail numbers higher than blaster without seeming to account for Scourge at all, and in both cases numbers that don't seem to have much to do with what it says on the tin.

A quick look at the corruptor vs blaster values for primary powers will show some rather impressive numbers... on the Corruptor side. Besides quite a few of the nukes being similar damage, a lot of Tier 1/2 powers offer superior damage for a Corruptor, as do level 32s such as Rain of Arrows. This was first noticed by others on Justin, but can also be seen with the starter powers in live right from character creation (thought there'd be a thread on this already actually). The low level hits (as well as their scourge copies when it triggers of course) as well as the scaling slider's promised values were apparently both significantly higher than Blasters. As far as I can tell on the test server however, at least for one primary set, it's the detailed info that's failing hard - the actual shots in practice seem more appropriate on their final damage. Example: Beam/Traps vs Beam/Devices - I wanted to check Caltrops just in case, everything unslotted. Nothing is "on" and Defiance is allowed to burn out before firing another power. Scourge was - given the target selection - a non-occurrence as well. Level 40. Tick and hit values are on level 2 atlas park Fallen Buckshots (and only them just to be sure). First number is Corruptor values, second Blaster. Caltrops: 114.53 (ticks for 12), 114.53 (ticks for 12) Single Shot: 99.26 (hits for 187.06), Blaster 91.62 (hits for 280.59) Charged Shot: 148.13 (hits for 306.78), 128.27 (hits for 490.54) Disintegrate: 164.77 (ticks for 40.4), 123.69 (ticks for 60.6) Cutting Beam: 70.17 (hits for 171.9), 52.63 (hits for 258) Lancer Beam: 184.78 (hits for 396.57), 155.76 (hits for 594.86) Penetrating Ray - Slow: hits for 841.79, hits for 1262.68 Penetrating Ray - Fast: hits for 426.5, hits for 681.98 Piercing Beam: 165.69 (hits for 405.92), 124.27 (hits for 608.89) Overcharge: 190.88 (hits for 561.19), 200.43 (hits for 841.79)

You'll notice similar behavior from smoke grenades and flash arrows. Powers that do not aggro only do not aggro for their basic attributes - add any proc on there, damage or otherwise, and when it triggers it adds to their aggro. Only one I wonder about is "Chance to Placate" - if it could be slotted into a non-damaging non-aggro sleep power, maybe by its nature it won't trigger a counterfire festival?

Beam doesn't have Refracting due to the snipe - for Blasters it's a heavily single target affair until we get Overcharge because of this - no rains, no other balls, just a cone and a small line. Now technically the Lancer Shot changes should somewhat improve things by guaranteeing (well, once that not-if-it-dies bug it has on beta's fixed) a disintegrate spread, though that's just a light DoT. Not much we can do here: you've gained two powerful AoEs that really do help plug the holes in Non-Sentinel beam offerings, but as you've noted they're setups. So as-is, from just Primary/Secondary, your options are Cutting Beam, Overcharge, and to a (much) lesser degree Piercing Beam and Post-beta Lancer Shot. This leaves us with... Your epic pool. Flame Mastery offers the fairly powerful Bonfire (Change that KB to KD for some serious damage), Rise of the Phoenix (hey, it'll happen), and though not damaging, the -Res inflicting radius 10 Melt Armor. Long recharges but Bonfire's quite strong if allowed to run its course. Force Mastery has Repulsion bomb, but unfortunately it's a 3.3s cast with over 20 end cost so that's not really something to 'rotate' with - even less I'd argue than Bonfire (which while longer recharge and same cast time can at least offer some real stopping power). Not the best option. If you do like cones, Leviathan Mastery gives you two more. They're a bit slow on the cast-time but their power's decent enough. Mace Mastery does rather nicely: The Spiderling summons are pretty decent, Scorpion Shield is good, and Mace Beam Volley (remember the redraw thing in customization) is a bit better than either Leviathan Cone for its cast-time, though it is alone. However you get Web Envelope, which is a non-damaging area web grenade to further screw that recharge time on all your favorite enemies. Mu's Static Discharge and Electrifying Fences are short ranged but not bad options - E.Fences is a small area damaging immobilize with a short enough cast time. Pretty sure the striker knows Ball Lightning, even if thats technically not you. Munitions will get you a Sleep grenade (very low damage, but kinda useful), and the LRM, which is like a slow-snipe with fast-snipe damage but as a targeted AoE. That's probably not what you're hoping for due to it being a slow setup-type though from afar with that cast time. Soul Mastery: Night Fall's a cone on a 20s recharge, Soul Tentacles is also on a 20s recharge, but personally I'd rather Electric Fences for an immobilize of similar max range. Mu or Mace may be good picks for you, though you'll have to go do a little bit of red time to get'em (you can switch back when it's unlocked no worries there)

Aw that's in the middle of my shift