[how are blasters supposed to solo?]

1 hour ago, Uun said:

I was today years old when I learned that existed. Part of the reason is that 3 of my blasters are Ice, DP and Water, so I only have 2 blasters with a snipe. (I have lots of corruptors with snipe, but they don't get this buff.)

 

It's an incredible deal for blasters with a good cone (read: not fire, one of the few things the powerset is bad at). Since I usually take Intuition Radial, I have 90 foot cones at basically all times since I only use the cone after a snipe.

 

I don't find it to usually matter for spherical AoEs as long as the power already is base 80 ft. range but it's still nice to have.

[how are blasters supposed to solo?]

On 4/30/2024 at 4:53 PM, Groundworm said:

I returned to CoH a couple of weeks ago after having not played for 3 years. After trying a number of my old characters, I decided to start anew to relearn the game. So I made a bio/axe tanker and I've been enjoying him.

 

Now that I understand more, I tried my old level 40 fire/rad blaster. Took him into a mission at +0/4 and... he dies with every group. Literally. He's got tough, weave, and maneuvers but the moment a mob gets to him, it's all over. The mission I tried was an Oranbega map, so close quarters fighting (in the narrow passages) is unavoidable. This is about the opposite of fun, and I'm not sure what to do.

 

Get a knockdown IO, put it in fireball, don't slot recharge in fireball at all. Overwhelming Force is the only one you can put in at level 40. Get global recharge elsewhere.

 

Spam fireball, lots of things will die while you'll be pretty safe. ~25% of them will get knocked down. (When you can slot Ragnarok at 50, this will improve to ~36% of them!) Chew inspirations, make sure to deactivate ones you don't use or need much -- for me that's usually yellows. I have binds to combine small and medium blues and greens into purples and reds that I fire regularly. 

 

Don't ignore your T1/T2 primary or T1 secondary. They can be fired while you are mezzed. I literally defeat enemies in my sleep all the time.

 

Aim+BU to start fights, I usually open with a ranged AoE and then quick snipe the most dangerous survivor immediately afterwards.

 

Blasters are *extremely* good solo ATs for most content, they are simply not as forgiving when you mess up. I basically turn on +2x4 at level 10 (Blue), 20 (Red), or 30 (Gold) and never turn it off, eventually graduating to +3x4 or higher around 40. For Red and Gold I still run +1x2 for most of the levels after 10 before I go to +2x4.

[Embedded Images are breaking?]

Interesting. I copied *image* and not *link*, but it looks like the rich text embedder hides that behavior. I hate when processes get "smart" sometimes.

[Ouro Missions Created at Wrong Levels]

Not sure what's triggering this, but on some Ouro missions, the mission is created one or two levels higher than it should be based on the combination of my level and notoriety settings -- e.g. a level that would baseline be level 24 while I have notoriety settings of +2x4 sometimes becomes level 27 or 28 instead of 26. I've noticed this including the first one of The Sky Raider Secret and the one tied to the Plague Stopper badge. It does not appear to be consistent. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't, even on the same character running the same mission again to test.

[Embedded Images are breaking?]

Several images I've posted in the last few weeks appear to break a day or so after I've posted them. This is merely annoying for goofing off posts, but it's quite a detriment for guides with images or image-based feedback and bug reports.

[Brute Ninjitsu]

 

One step closer to Mongo.

[Graves and Twinshot Arcs have erroneous spawns at higher group sizes.]

 

Just noticed this today, don't usually play these at higher notoriety. Per friends, it seems to happen on Twinshot as well. This console normally spawns alone.

[Heroes aren't showing up in MOST mayhem missions]

2 hours ago, Rudra said:

Actually, they don't. When you break down the vault door and the PPD/Longbow ambushes start spawning in response, they spawn outside the bank and run to it. I've intercepted them many times just camping at the bank entrance with multiple traps ready for them. (Edit: After looting the vault and running back to the entrance.)

 

That's the point of the question.

 

Spawning outside causes more chances for this failure to occur.

 

Anyway, spawn points are definitely broken on the Mayhem Missions of all sizes. Did several hours of testing today, on three different occasions at Notoriety x1 I got attacked by enemies that were clipped inside of buildings and fully non-visible. In all cases these were the enemies tied to the sidequests in the map.

[Heroes aren't showing up in MOST mayhem missions]

I'm noticing the same issues. Spawn size seems to make the problem worse, though it's been a problem at every notoriety level I've tried.

[An infinitely repeatable training mission with a cooldown resetter.]

I'm envisioning something similar to a danger room or CO's power houses: an instanced area with training dummies. Upon entering the instanced room, all of your cooldowns are immediately finished, and there would be a switch inside that you could click to reset those cooldowns again. After exiting the room by any means, all of your cooldowns are immediately set to maximum duration again, as if via switching builds.

 

The old respec trial contacts would make logical 'mission doors' for this.

 

Idea brought to you by spending 30 minutes trying to test the specifics of a silent ability which reports nothing in the combat log and has a base 90 second cooldown.

[Suggestion for all Task/Strike Forces: a toggle to shut off the cutscenes]

Because people will immediately poll in many cases to find who the holdout is. That means people will either get in a habit of lying (unlikely) or just feel pressure to not be the "troublemaker"

 

Believe me, I hate seeing most of these cutscenes, especially the one right before rommy in the ITF and the ones at the start of BAF and Magisterium. I just don't think a toggle like this is going to be productive on the whole, just hope future TFs have better level design and cutscenes usage. I think LGTF and ASF handle these issues better than some of the earlier stuff. 

[Suggestion for all Task/Strike Forces: a toggle to shut off the cutscenes]

I feel like that is going to immediately lead to "not it" "not it" "Oh i wanted to watch them" "WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT" scenarios

 

Because that's exactly the way it goes in SWTOR when one person is engaging in a plot conversation and everyone else is skipping everything

 

Most MMOs try to put their cutscenes at natural break points, including after the final boss, to minimize this -- this is something that CoH didn't really have time to figure before shutdown. 

[Empowerment buffs to last 8 hours]

That's an interesting idea i would need to think about, Jacke. (I have substituted Finland in lieu of a thonk emoji, given our limited reaction options.) There aren't a lot of immediately equivalent situations in other games to draw from, but the closest I can think of (reagent party buffs) was a largely positive mechanic I think. 

[Empowerment buffs to last 8 hours]

I understand that perspective.

 

But in my ideal City, many more players would feel encouraged -- not obligated, no treadmills, please -- to engage with more challenging content than they do right now, and doing that without removing or worsening the existing easy content will be an involved process that requires consideration on many points. 

 

We'll never ever reach majority adoption, of course, that's not in the cards for any game. But I want to make as nice a ramp as possible. 

[Story arc rewards]

It is minor but it would assist with the fact that there is insufficient player income without the AH to keep your enhancements relevant, while quest arcs are expected to be the best way of gearing for a low level character in many games. I think this is a good proposal that would improve the new player experience. 

[Suggestion for all Task/Strike Forces: a toggle to shut off the cutscenes]

If it's team level, which it most likely would have to be in order for it to work at all, this would essentially prevent newbies from ever seeing the cutscenes at all. 

 

In SWTOR, anyone who bothers to watch a flashpoint cutscene has often been at serious risk of verbal abuse and being called a troll for watching it. I don't know if that's still true in the community today but it was a big problem a few years ago. 

[Empowerment buffs to last 8 hours]

I don't care about the power creep, personally. They're in the game already, the top level can get them if they want to spend the time. 

 

I'm uncomfortable with the idea because we keep adding harder content to this game (which I like!) and this could conceivably create a situation where there's a community expectation of "raid buffs" for anything semi difficult. And not everyone has a supergroup. I like keeping a lot of my characters out of one, I only built my first base last month. I almost never use the zone portal SGs. 

 

I'm sympathetic to the convenience argument but I've seen this sort of thing landslide in other games before. When a powerful buff becomes convenient to maintain and there's content that isn't completely trivial, community metas adjust.

 

I've been reluctant to say anything because I like most of the proponents of this change, and this is already a very negative board. But I don't really like this idea, not as it is. I'm open to discussion about how it could be improved, if possible, to address concerns. I don't like the idea of increasing costs because that actually deepens issues along those lines: another, more expensive, expected but obscured element of player power. We have so many of those already. 

[Differences between CoH and CoV missions?]

57 minutes ago, Ukase said:

Off topic - but in what way do you think they stand out? 

 

Blaster has an exciting inherent that works for their playstyle: limited ability to ignore mez, which means they're one of the very few ATs that cares about mez resistance stats without mez protection (which is basically immunity in most cases), and it makes handling mez more interesting than "mezzed, break free." I actually consider what my response to a mez will be on a case by case basis. It also adds unique value to what are usually three of the weakest powers they have and can make continuing to keep at least two of them feel valuable. An interesting inherent used to be true of all the red-side ATs; it is no longer true for Brutes. It is not true for any of blue-side AT inherents other than blasters, which are all passives which may constrain build choice but don't affect active play very much.

 

Blaster also has two active powersets that do similar but different things, so two blasters can look and play very differently based on how their primary and secondary synergize and compete with each other. Until you get to the hardest content in the game, this isn't really true for melee armorset ATs; most defensive sets are passive and in most content play will look the same. Even the most active defensive sets like bio are primarily toggles, and as you get higher level, you usually settle in a single adaptation mode with bio -- at most, two. And frankly, bio is only *slightly* weirder than a blaster secondary, blaster secondaries are extremely weird and have a wide variety of things they do.

 

Finally, Blasters are strong at soloing (what a sentence compared to launch) without doing anything weird. They're not the strongest, but you don't need to do trippy things to make them able to survive on their own under normal play in a limited circumstance -- and then if you DO trippy things, you get rewarded for it. They can scale up to content if you can build and play to that content; they are not always married to a team despite benefitting from one. This is a definite weakness on controller and defender when looked at over the whole game, despite the number of interesting interactions their powerset combos offer. Strong solo troller or defender builds are almost always the result of dedicated study and knowledge by a player, be that experience or instruction. They're anomalous rather than the default experience. Dom struggles in this respect out of the redside ATs for the first half of the leveling curve, but it makes up for it with a vengeance and I'd say it's much more part of the standard Dom experience.

[Cone Judgements erroneously list enhanced range in their detailed information.]

Per City of Data, range is a disallowed strength on judgements but range is an allowed enhancement for the Cryonic and Vorpal Judgement trees. This unique interaction causes the detailed information to list the effects of an alpha slot that enhances range (such as Intuition) but in actual play, there is no such range enhancement.

 

[What I wish Empathy looked like (A long overdue rework)]

I think this is a great bit of feedback. Your solutions are both comprehensive and well-explained, and take into account both the concept and training the instincts of players.

 

From a meta standpoint, I am a little leery of -res (the fact that it keeps being used as a solution can become a compounding problem of its own) but it's hard to think of other answers that navigate as many concerns about the set successfully. I certainly don't have a better one, and I think this would make a great cornerstone for any dev looks at the subject matter.

[Nukes need to be nerfed]

I personally dislike lore pets as well as barrier and I'm not a *huge* fan of judgement, but I don't like the "restrict these outside of incarnate content" suggestions because very little interferes with my perception that my character has grown stronger than "you may only use these abilities at approved times". Incarnate shifts are tolerable because they have always only pertained to your performance within incarnate trials and are basically a hard gear check and nothing else.

 

I mean, jeez, when am I gonna appreciate the fact that I can teleport-kick a few dozen people if not solo? Because it's sure not going to be in the middle of a busy eight-person Advanced Mode Taskforce where I've got my mind everywhere but how pretty my abilities are and in fact I probably should be turning particles off.

 

WoW has gone heavy on this concept (by causing enemies in current content to first scale with your level and now scale with your gear) and sure, I don't really *need* to be able to outscale random enemies as part of my daily content but it also meant I increasingly treated the game as a lobby game rather than a roleplaying game. It's a pretty good lobby game these days, I really have enjoyed the last few seasons of M+, but it's not a game I like to passively exist in as much as I used to.

 

And personally speaking, I do not really feel outcompeted with by judgment except on content that's so easy I could probably comfortably solo, duo, or trio it with the right people. 

 

My opinions in these matters frequently boil down to: your desire is reasonable, but is it worth transforming the game as it exists with its current install base to cater to that? Most of the answers I see tell me that it is not.

[Make the Trenchcoat "Bow Tie" *shoulders* costume piece available to other tops.]

Trenchcoat has a special shoulder item that is also called Bow Tie with a different model, separate from the Bow Tie chest detail item available to most tops. If it could be enabled for all tops as a shoulder item, that'd be appreciated.

 

Thanks.

[Concealment Pool suggestions]

Reasonable theory, but it's not the result of vengeance. I make a point of letting vengeance wear off on groups when I'm trying to sneak.

 

I don't team often for content outside of taskforces and trials, and it'll just.... happen randomly that on some maps I need to be on guard against the Tirailleurs. (This variable *does* seem to be largely a map-based phenomenon, and I think it might be tied to a specific variant of the Tirailleurs, but it's difficult for me to read the entity data on CoD2). I've noticed this behavior in the months I've been back in game across old content. It was something of an interesting pain and is actually part of why I wished there was more depth to the stealth system of this game. In other MMO games, you can see the perception radius of enemies with heightened sight and you can use a variety of movement, CC, and perception tools to navigate these; high risk/reward. 

[Nukes need to be nerfed]

In an ideal world, Blast sets would probably be designed very differently.

 

However, I am not convinced that any attempt to bring nukes in line after we've had them like this for five years would be constructive or pleasant rather than disruptive, and I very specifically dislike your proposal, sorry. Every single powerset is bespoke (positive) or inconsistent (negative) to some degree and this would completely shake up every single blast powerset such that you'd need to look at them in totality all over again. 

[Concealment Pool suggestions]

The Tirailleurs in Nemesis (which are by far the most common sniper group found in mission maps) do frequently but not consistently see me farther than I think they should on my Stalker who runs both Hide and a Stealth IO, I can verify this -- it happens at roughly 60 feet, I believe. I haven't looked into why. 

 

Sometimes I can get right up to melee range with them no problem and assassinate, sometimes it triggers at 60. Sometimes a character with no StealthRadius increases beyond the Unique IOs is able to deal with them at normal range. I'm not sure what's going on there precisely.