Solarverse

I've always wanted this as well.

Like I said, I'm going to agree to disagree. We can debate this all month long. Honestly, since I am NOT asking for changes here, it's not worth it to me to continue this conversation. Had I been interested in a change, I would debate this further, but since I am not, well...it's simply too much going back and forth.

You keep making the exact same mistake. You keep assuming every Dark Blast power is a damage over time. They aren't. There is one damage over time attack in Dark Blast. And it is a cone attack, not a single target one. So let's take your (flawed) analogy. I'll explain why it's flawed in a moment. You have a group of 6 enemies with 175 health each at level 50. You probably wont find this, but let's go with it since that's your example. Let's say for some reason you haven't enhanced your attacks beyond accuracy. I will be listing first AoE attacks in descending strength, then cone attacks in decending strength, then single target attacks in descending strength. For Ice Blast Blizzard: Target Type: location based aoe Damage: 76 ticks of 2.78 lethal damage over 15 seconds, 76 ticks of 2.78 cold damage over 15 seconds, total damage of 422.56 damage over 15 seconds Average Damage Per Cast Cycle: 2.42 Cast Time: 2.03 seconds Recharge Time: 2 minutes 50 seconds Ice Storm: Target Type: location based aoe Damage: 76 ticks of 0.78 lethal damage over 15 seconds, 76 ticks of 0.78 cold damage over 15 seconds, total of 118.56 damage over 15 seconds Average Damage Per Cast Cycle: 1.88 Cast Time: 2.03 second Recharge Time: 1 minute Frost Breath: Target Type: 40 foot long 30 degree wide cone Damage: 2 ticks of 43.79 cold damage over 0.6 seconds, total damage of 87.58 damage over 0.6 seconds Average Damage Per Cast Cycle: 4.69 Cast Time: 2.67 seconds Recharge Time: 16.seconds Bitter Freeze Ray: Target Type: single target Damage: 172.67 cold damage Average Damage Per Cast Cycle: 9.87 Cast Time: 2.5 seconds Recharge Time 15 second Freeze Ray: Target Type: single target Damage: 11 ticks of 12.51 cold damage over 2 seconds, total of 137.61 damage over 2 seconds mag 3 hold for 9.54 seconds Average Damage Per Cast Cycle: 12.51 Cast Time: 1 second Recharge Time: 10 seconds Ice Blast: Target Type: single target Damage: 40.04 smashing damage, 62.56 cold damage, total of 102.6 damage Average Damage Per Cast Cycle: 10.61 Cast Time: 1.67 seconds Recharge Time: 8 seconds Ice Bolt: Target Type: single target Damage: 12.51 smashing damage, 50.05 cold damage, total of 62.56 damage Average Damage Per Cast Cycle: 12.51 Cast Time: 1 seconds Recharge Time: 4 seconds Compare this to Dark blast. Again I'll list things in AoE (strongest to weakest), then cone (strongest to weakest), then single target (strongest to weakest). Blackstar Target Type: PBAoE Damage: 62.56 smashing damage, 187.68 negative energy damage, total of 250.24 damage Average Damage Per Cast Cycle: 1.69 Cast Time: 3 seconds Recharge Time: 2 minutes 25 seconds Umbral Torrent Target Type: 80 ft long 30 degree wide cone Damage: 60.06 negative energy Average Damage Per Cast Cycle: 3.75 Cast Time: 1.03 seconds Recharge Time: 15 seconds Tenebrous Tentacles Target Type: 40 foot long 40 degree wide cone Damage: 8.45 negative energy damage, 8 ticks of 6.26 negative energy damage over 7.1 seconds after a 1 second delay, total of 58.53 damage Average Damage Per Cast Cycle: 5.01 Cast Time: 1.67 seconds Recharge Time: 10 seconds Gloom Target Type: single target Damage: 8 ticks of 13.76 negative energy damage over 3.6 seconds, total damage of 110.08 Average Damage Per Cast Cycle: 11.39 Cast Time: 1.67 seconds Recharge Time: 8 seconds Life Drain Target Type: single target Damage: 102.6 negative energy damage, +120.48 self heal Average Damage Per Cast Cycle: 10.33 Cast Time: 1.93 seconds Recharge Time: 8 seconds Abyssal Gaze Target Type: single target Damage: 3 ticks of 29.53 negative energy damage over 2.1 seconds, total of 88.59 damage, mag 3 hold for 9.54 seconds Average Damage Per Cast Cycle: 4.09 Cast Time: 1.67 seconds Recharge Time: 20 seconds Dark Blast Target Type: single target Damage: 62.56 negative energy damage Average Damage Per Cast Cycle: 12.51 Cast Time: 1 seconds Recharge Time: 4 seconds You'll notice I didn't list any snipe attacks. There's a couple reasons for that. First of all, Ice Blast doesn't have a snipe. And second of all, you can't get any of the stats for Dark Blast's snipe in the character creation menu. But when you actually compare the numbers, you notice something rather interesting things. For one, while Ice Blast has higher damage many of those are DoT attacks. With the more damaging ones being location based DoT which the enemy will flee before they take the full damage unless you can prevent it. You should also take note that with the hypothetical group of enemies that all have 175 health, most finishing attacks are wasting damage regardless of if it was Dark or Ice Blast being used. And when you factor in cast times, yes TT is going to get it's full damage of on most of the enemy group, unless you follow it up with Blackstar. But why wouldn't you be leading off with Blackstar instead, and just wiping out the entire group all at once? Something which Ice Blast's tier 9 nuke can't always claim to do since enemies tend to flee the area as soon as it's cast. You also notice that the Damage Per Activation Cycle for both sets is roughly the same across the board. Imagine that, they both do the same overall damage due to Ice Blast having generally longer recharge times and activation times. Can we please put this "dark blast sacrifices damage for control" myth to bed now? It's not a myth though, depending on how you apply what you wrote and the environment you apply it under. Let me say for starters, yes...you are correct. However... What you typed up sounds terrific on paper, under strict scenarios and controlled circumstances. However, in actual game play, how often does your TT finish its dots before the mobs die? I would say that it depends on what you have on your team and what you are up against. You need to realize that things are not always white and black. This is where it boils down to personal preference I suppose, and my preference differs from yours. The problem with TT is that it is a huge grey area. It widely depends on so many variable in order for the math that you apply to actually stand. The ONLY way TT is getting off its tics of damage before the mob dies, is if you solo, or if you fight a high resistant mob, like Crey for an example. Otherwise, mobs are going to melt under the blasting power of more front loaded DPS like Fire Blasters, and single targets are going to drop fast under the fury of Ice Blasters. Yes, Ice Blasters has DoTs as well, however, those DoTs tick very fast whereas TT tics one dot per actual second. I understand you say that Ice Storm makes the mobs scatter, however, I don't have that issue, mobs seem more interested in the Tank than running off. Sure, a couple might run, but then they run right back in. However, back to what I was saying, if you are on a team of competent players, TT will rarely finish the damage that it is capable of. This is where I feel like your argument doesn't apply. Your argument applies under strict and controlled environments. Not in actual game play where variables change from team to team, and mob to mob...at least not in my personal experience. What I am writing is no myth...the very slow ticking dots on TT hurts the set as a Blaster set. Which is why as soon as I can I am respecing out of it. What you are saying is true, yes...I cannot deny this....however, you are not taking in to consideration the very important variables. At this point though, I will agree to disagree. It's honestly more about what you consider important about the set and what you like about the set. The set for me has two powers that I don't like. Lucky for me I do not have to take them. I can pick up other powers in the Epics or Ancillary to help fill what I feel like are holes in the set. Anyway, hope this helps you understand where I am coming from here....even if you feel like my thoughts on this are flawed. ;)

They trade damage per second in a game where high damage per second counts most. I'll leave it at that though. This is an argument that I do not think can be won when people like it just as is. Not everyone is going to like a powerset for the same reasons. I see potential in the set, and I se some work arounds, so it is not important to me to try and get the set changed. I understand why you guys like it, just as I am sure you understand why I don't like a couple of the powers. Nobody could change my mind about Practiced Brawler being left as is. Nobody could convince me to change it. Just as I know that no matter what I said, I could never get you to change your mind. ;) Like I said, a ton of people I talk to in game, random people every day, feel as though Dark Primary and Secondary for a Blaster is a joke. Not surprisingly, the people on the forums feel differently. I am in the middle on this, I love the set, but only see two abilities wrong with the set. So I see both sides. Except it doesn't trade DPS. The DPS for TT is on par with any other Blaster cone attack. What it trades is burst damage, which is not quite the same thing. And this trade is only made with one single attack. Lead off with TT, and you'll get the full damage on most of the enemies hit with it. Follow up with another cone attack (since enemies are still nicely grouped for it), and that too gets full damage on everything. And TT has likely now managed to deal most to all of it's damage to your primary target. Start using your single target attacks next. You might get less then full TT damage on one of the enemies caught in it, but then again with any other blaster set the 2nd or 3rd attack was probably overkill which 'wasted' damage as well. Or in other words you didn't trade any damage, but got a cone immobilize. The only thing you didn't get was a Single Big Number showing above everything's head when TT hit. Thus it likely feels like it does little damage. Then again the various 'rain' powers also show multiple ticks of low damage yet nobody complains about them trading damage for a secondary effect. In fact, it's entirely possible for an enemy to exit most Rain type attacks before they took the full damage from it. They can't do that with TT. Okay, let me be more clear on how I mean this. If I hit you with an Ice attack, it does an instant 100 points of damage. If I can pull off three attack of 100, 50 and 25 in less than 2 seconds, and my target has 175 health, my target dies in less than 3 seconds. If I am using dark, and it does 100 damage, 50 and 25, but only tics 10 damage per second...my target will take much longer to die than if I had used Ice. So, damage per second...in a more literal sense. P.S. I couldn't read all of your message, in a TF at the moment, will finish reading it shortly, promise. Edit: I hear what you are saying, however, the Dot for TT tics way too slow. It's not a big deal though, I found a way around all of that, I just have to use Ghost Widow's powerset to do it. In the end, all will be well.

As I'd already pointed out, dark blasters don't trade damage for controls to begin with. They might trade burst damage for a cone immobilize, But TT does damage on par with other Blaster cone attacks. It's not the highest damage blaster cone, but it's middle of the pack in terms of strength. And it does twice as much damage as the Defender version of TT. Corrupters do more damage at base, but with a blaster's inherent they'll get more damage overall out of it. In fact, none of Dark Blast (blaster version) sacrifices damage for utility. It gets both damage and utility. But even if that wasn't the case, blasters have long traded damage for utility. That's the whole point of one secondary after all. They trade damage per second in a game where high damage per second counts most. I'll leave it at that though. This is an argument that I do not think can be won when people like it just as is. Not everyone is going to like a powerset for the same reasons. I see potential in the set, and I se some work arounds, so it is not important to me to try and get the set changed. I understand why you guys like it, just as I am sure you understand why I don't like a couple of the powers. Nobody could change my mind about Practiced Brawler being left as is. Nobody could convince me to change it. Just as I know that no matter what I said, I could never get you to change your mind. ;) Like I said, a ton of people I talk to in game, random people every day, feel as though Dark Primary and Secondary for a Blaster is a joke. Not surprisingly, the people on the forums feel differently. I am in the middle on this, I love the set, but only see two abilities wrong with the set. So I see both sides.

I'm all about what is fair. How old are you? I wasn't going to answer this, because I just know deep down you are trying to provoke some type of response. However, I am curious where you are going with this. If you have read the posts that lead up to this point, you will see that I have already given my age. I'm 43 years old. Why do you ask?

And in case you guys missed it, this settles it. Any conversation on the subject from here on out is simply blowing hot air.

I laugh at people who do that...it tells me they were so desperate for a name, they were willing to make the name look as goofy as anyone could possibly make it look in order to achieve getting that name. It shows lack of imagination...and quite frankly, lack of intelligence.

Not a big fan of this idea. We have a system that works, why mess with that by taking a chance on something that can easily be broken or even exploited? I think we should leave it as is.

This argument always rang hollow for me. It is incredibly rare for enemies to stack enough mezzes on you to overcome toggle mez protection from a primary or secondary set, You don't play Tanks, do you? My Ice Tank, who has a very good Toggle Mez Resist, gets occasionally held and Immobilized through his Mez protection against CoT. Had that been a click (which goes on auto for me anyway, so I never even think about it) those holds and immobs would have never phased me. My main is an Invul/SS Tanker, and I've literally never been mezzed through Unyielding, unless I'm fighting Ghost Widow or the like, or it's a mez that Unyielding doesn't protect against (terrorize or confuse). Try running more lower level CoT. Earth Mages can lock you down, promise. I'm thinking you might have had a Kin or an Emp on your team keeping you with Increase Density or Clear Mind, and this is why you never had an issue. However, there are those rare times when playing with a /Kin or Emp and they don't pick up those abilities, you'll find yourself locked down. I just think you got very lucky, either that or I got very unlucky, lol. Also, let's consider PvP. If you PvP, then you know your mez resist shield will only save you for 1=so many times with a Controller landing a hold on you. If your Mez resist is a click and stackable, you'll avoid being help for much longer. The click is better for PvP than PvE. However, I honestly don't see the gripe on it. You put it on auto and forget about it. It can't be detoggled, it won't run out of endurance and crash, it stacks, and you don't even have to ever think about it. It is by far the superior mez resist. I don't know, my man...I think it's a pretty solid reason to keep it as a click. :)

This argument always rang hollow for me. It is incredibly rare for enemies to stack enough mezzes on you to overcome toggle mez protection from a primary or secondary set, You don't play Tanks, do you? My Ice Tank, who has a very good Toggle Mez Resist, gets occasionally held and Immobilized through his Mez protection against CoT. Had that been a click (which goes on auto for me anyway, so I never even think about it) those holds and immobs would have never phased me.

This right here. I used to drive Contollers insane in PvP because they couldn't lock me down before I could kill them. Had my PB not been stacked, they would have nailed me for sure.

I thought so, but was not positive. Thanks.

Which is why as a Dark Blaster, I focus the boss first, since I have the best chance for a dot to complete its cycle with the boss...unless of course there is a Stalker on the team, then I just give up on it and fire at whatever is moving, lol. At least with fire, you dont even think about the dots because fire has a nice front load to it. Which brings me to the question, is fire a chance to dot, or will it dot every single time? I know Spines is a chance for dot, not sure about fire.

I wanted my Dark Blaster to feel like a Blaster. So I went with /Fire and it works well, and colored right, looks like it could actually be a /Dark secondary. I'm okay with it. Only thing I dont like is it takes too much time for my dots to complete their cycles, and more often than not, the mobs are dead due to front loaded DPS guys, before my dots can even complete a single cycle. That hopefully will change one of these days, but I wont hold my breath, heh.

You have just earned a great deal of respect from me. Thank you. Another thing we do not hear is tone of voice. So it is easy to take things the wrong way, depending on how it is read by the reader. I probably should have made it clear that my post was not a request of any kind, just a what would you have done differently had you been in charge type question. That might have made this conversation much more pleasant. :)

You can "disagree" with c) all you like, but what I stated for a) and b) are both factually correct. You may not like the options you currently have for KB to KD, but that's beyond the scope of my post. I touched base on that earlier and am well aware of it. Also, this was not a suggestion, just a discussion at what I would have done to make the set better and curious what others thought of the set and how they would have personally made it different had they been in charge of creating the set. I suppose the people who have posted here feel they would have done the exact same thing. Meh, if that's what they like, cool. Somehow, the gung hos of CoH came out of the wood work to protect their Dark Blaster investments and defend the Dark Primary's honor? I guess... Clearly it is blasphemy to even speak your mind about what you would have done to make the set feel more Blastery without catching hell from the good folk of City of Heroes. People are acting like I am pushing for some type of change, I never once indicated this. I was very clear about my intentions and it would seem people read in to it for more than face value. However, if people wish to argue about it, who am I to deny them their pass time? By all means, let's argue, because I can keep this up all day! :D P.S. To make something very clear, nobody seems to be reading the post I quoted and are taking what I said about my "creds" out of context. It was in response to a guy who felt it necessary to call people newbies. I corrected him and showed him that "newbies" are in the minority while showing him that vet players are the majority here. Not just myself, but a vast majority of us are very knowledgeable about this game, and that calling somebody a "newbie" in this game these days does not apply. It would be helpful to put it in to full context, instead of taking a stab at me for saying what I did while leaving it out of context. Also, 43 rocks! ;)

Keep BFs handy is all I can tell you. I get it, it's a pain, but that and IOs is your only options.

Any toggle that affects a target needs to be retoggled. Only toggles that affect yourself stay on through CC.

If this happens, I will find a different server to play on. This game has NEVER needed this. This game has ran for many long years and never once needed this. If you cannot create a name, then then try and think outside the box. I would even be willing to help you come up with names. We do not need 50 people running around with identical names. I /JRanger this thread...and I am not the type to /JRanger anything....this is my first. Nothing against you personally, OP...I just really hate this idea with a huge passion. Edited: My first edit was a bit harsh.

key word being Option, Devs. Too many sounds and stacking sounds and sounds that now fade have already suffered the wrath of the previous Devs. Please make this an option...and if possible, make an option to bring back all the sounds that have been removed or forced to fade out or stacked. God I miss that, hate so much complainers complained those sounds away and the Devs of the past didn't take the time to make them OPTIONS! >:(

Hahaha, I didn't! :D

CO simply put is garbage. CO is purely a single player game, with about 10 to 20 minutes of multiplay as you run the same missions over and over and over and over again. You could not get players in that game to run actual progression missions, all they wanted to do was queue up for this or that, and play it for 10 to 20 minutes, then rinse repeat. Much like AE missions here. It's boring as hell...and unless I wanted to solo play, I was not going to be running regular mission. This game promotes team play. Solo play in this game is rough and unrewarding. CO is NOTHING like this game, CO is absolutely horrible. CO has a cash shop system that put the final knife in the heart of that game. Once they started that crap, the game went to the tubes like the puke that it is. With CO, you can create a character, you can pick one major AoE, and one major Single target attack power, then spam them over and over and over again and never need any other damage power and steel aggro from the "Tank." Tanks in that game are garbage with no real taunt...it's all built in and rarely works right. There is no synergy with the powers in that game. I requested on that game's forums year after year for an Energy Power Set...you know what the people over there told me? "You have energy, the Force and electric is your energy powers." Huh? They are idiots. Kids pretending to be adults. It was crap like that in which threw me off from the game. This game got it right, how you can chain the powers together, they are fluid, they synergize well. This game did everything right where it counts. No other game compares...not by a long shot. Anyone who disagrees...is simply wrong. ;)

Hmmm, I will take a look at that when I get off from work. If this is correct, then I appreciate the info. I'll go in-game to grab the numbers for what the various targeted aoe do at level 50 now. Mind you, they wont be the enhanced values, just base ones. But it should give you an idea. Remember, this is just the targeted aoe. Not location based aoe or tier 9 attacks like Nova Dual Pistols rain of bullets: 3 ticks 14.58 lethal damage over 1.1 sec, 3 tics 6.26 lethal damage over 1.1 sec, total damage of 62.52 damage at level 50 if unslotted Archery Explosive Arrow: 18.77 Smashing damage, 37.54 lethal damage, total damage of 56.31 at level 50 if unslotted Assault Rifle M20 Grenade: 18.77 smashing, 37.54 lethal, total of 56.31 damage at level 50 if unslotted Beam Rifle no aoe beyond the 9 nova Fire Blast Fireball: 12.51 smashing, 43.79 fire, 3 ticks of 9.38 fire over 2.1 sec after a 0.5 sec delay, total of 84.44 damage at level 50 if unslotted Psychic Blast Psionic Tornado: 5 ticks of 11.14 psionic damage over 4.1 sec, total damage of 55.68 at level 50 if unslotted Radiation Blast Neutron Bomb: 56.31 energy damage on target Water Blast Water Burst: 14.08 smashing damage, 42.23 cold damage, total damage of 56.31 at level 50 if unslotted As for cone attacks, Umbrial Torrent does 60.06 neg energy damage and Tenebrous Tentacles does about 58.5 damage (but takes 8 seconds for all the damage to be applied). Compare this to the average damage of cone attacks in other sets, which is on average about 57-65 damage, with fire blast and Ice Blast being outliers. Water Blast also does far more damage with it's cones, but then again this also isn't a set which to my knowledge was released on the old Live servers. It was still in testing, so it not being balanced like the others makes all kinds of sense. EDIT: The main reason fire blast universally does more damage then other sets is because it's attacks all have a damage over time component in addition to the burst damage. The burst damage is in line with other cone and targeted aoe attacks, with the DoT pushing things higher. Which also means that much of the time you're not getting the DoT damage due to enemies dying too fast for it to matter. I think Ice Blast gets more base damage due to it's attacks having longer recharge, but can't exactly remember. That's good info. Appreciate you taking the time to look that up. I'm still working and won't be home for another hour. Thanks for that. Well in that case, maybe I should propose more casting animation options. ;)

You wouldn't consider it a waste if you didnt finish out the set? If it was a plus regen or plus defense or something like that, I could see your point, but this is a kb to kd io. Just the way I see it is all.