Mezmera

Not really. Any character I consider built properly usually doesn't include snipe. This change allows me to actually work it into builds. This is me as well. I can't remember the last time I did include a snipe, because I don't really use them. Now though? My /MA dom is very very happy with this change. Not sure how you like to build your doms but for PvE mine always go leadership pool for the easy LoTG mules in manuevers and vengeance and take tactics for the to-hit. If you had taken your snipe and I do believe /MA gets a +tohit buff in envenom blades then you can toggle up two nasty strong insta-snipes usually by the time that buff wears off. With tactics and the kismet +6% to-hit any very small addition to to-hit would get you to the insta-snipe, meaning whenever you popped your domination, envenom blades or even vengeance for a longer buff. I suggest you don't play it on live quite yet because if the proposed changes go through it's quite a loss on that QoL buff doms got. Or please do play it on live as it currently is and realize it's damage is proposed to be cut by 1/3 so we can add your voice to the small amount of us dominators asking for a compromise.

I knoes I knoes hard choices!

You do realize in the hero epic power pools we have access to Energy Transfer? I go with a couple mandatory secondary powers and take ET every time for pve, take it you will love it!

I appreciate the response! To be fair I'm not asking to be king dpser that's what blasters were meant to be and kind of are from a plug and play stand point but I think some brutes and scrappers have turned out being far better. I've had a lot of fun with my new Archery/Trick Arrow blaster with all of these new tools to play with. I was just happy to get to play my dominator again despite not knowing how great snipe was until a few weeks in, then its getting nerfed so harshly for doms before any performance enhancements come through. Every power in a dominators secondary had a longer recharge in relation to blasters (their closer cousins) but to make up for that the thinking was that those powers would do more damage and we don't have access to lots of the good aoes. The problem was that mostly that didn't ring true with the exception of the snipe which no one hardly used because dominators didn't have the time for the interrupt on snipe when they were controlling things. All day every day give me slower charging attacks that actually hit hard, I can bide my time doing what I'm primarily supposed to be doing anyways. That's why the change in concept of the snipe now seemed so counter intuitive to the ATs design originally. I get that it hits hard and I love it. Let the blasters have their nukes for every mob, is it inconceivable for a dominator to have one strong attack that hits a single target hard? Even with the addition of to-hit it comes off very harsh, maybe some middle ground, not back up to 3.56 but not 2.78. Recharge time I could care less about, the longer recharge that buys me more damage the better, so long as it's not more than the 20 seconds it started with. Dominators truly are the unicorns of this game. You get a good perma dom and they can do wonderous things, so far as controls go. I get why it's gonna be hard to balance them out because with IOs the task is just too difficult. That's the reason for apprehension of nerfing here, buffing there. Where does it end? As for the new assault set I can't wait to see it! Really hope it involves whips since Masterminds have already beaten us to it and it would seem whips and dominators would go hand in hand.

With respect, plenty of people have objected to these changes, and we're going into round three of testing soon enough, based largely on player feedback. If you have something constructive to say, say it and it will be heard. If all you're going to do is levy personal attacks against the devs, then you aren't going to get anywhere, same as any game. (And yes, there are plans for new content, but that takes time. It's been a little over a month.) I get where he's coming from. The insta-snipe must have been so much fun to have for all these years hence why it never got "balanced" during that time. Now that other people find it fun it needs to be brought into line. In all honesty the snipe changes to blaster, corruptors, defenders and epic pools seem to be dumbing it down so more people can enjoy it and those more intuitive ones can buff it back to its original level. Which I am completely fine with since I play most ATs anyways. What is concerning is that there IS a big nerf to the Dominator snipe and yet there's no dialogue about it. Blasters are upset their range goes down, their recharge goes up a few seconds and shortly there's conversation and we have a change. It's obvious there's an intention to nerf one out of the many. All the dominator players are asking is for some honesty and clarification as to the thinking behind this, as in a whole their secondary lacks in damage which is what they are supposed to be somewhat good at. I would think that rather than going in and revamping all of dominator secondaries to improve performance there could be concessions made on both sides of the coin in regards to their snipe that way we can just get this squared away right here and now. No more need to look into dom secondaries (with the exception of those without a snipe). Anyways thanks for reading if you have.

Dominator Snipes: -Fast Snipe: -Base Damage scale 2.28 (down from 3.56) -Recharge time 12 seconds (down from 20 seconds) For comparison purposes lets say your damage comes out to be about 200x the scale. Damage is going down from 712 points of damage to 456, yes I know there's the new bit about to-hit which will add more damage so that would be an additional 100 points. As you can deduce 712 > 556. That's a big loss if you can't see that. Now I'm not sure about you but as a dominator I'm not spamming all my damage attacks in sequence, I sprinkle in a bit of my primaries into my cycle, or else I may as well be a blaster. So then by the time I'm looking for a snipe it should be recharged by when I need it at the current longer recharge time. On to the Recharge time. IO set procs are based on procs per minute, so say you have that Apocalypse Range extra damage proc that averages out to fire 4.5 times per minute and your snipe has a 20 second base recharge, that proc in snipe will ALWAYS fire so you're getting guaranteed moderate damage on top of that base. Lowering the recharge to 12 seconds makes it so there's instances where it won't fire. Like I said I'm not just there spamming my snipes and damage powers solely so when I have that chance for big damage it's there and consistent. The outrage over blasters snipes going up a few seconds guaranteeing that the extra moderate damage proc fired every time to now it being lowered back to the point of "probably" will fire with a loss on the damage scale to boot and most are happy with that I find laughable.

I've been trying! But I think those of us that don't stalk this forum are getting drowned out by a vocal minority of blasters who'd rather their snipe act as a t3 blast with range as if they don't already have an abundance to choose from. I really really don't feel dominators need the recharge to be so fast on their snipe, we got other things to do in between damage spam. Much rather leave the recharge where it's at and damage BUT I do think there's a concerted effort to lower Dominators snipe damage as they feel it's too much so we getting nerfed hard without nary a comment about our concerns. God forbid dominators have something to compete with other damage dealers. It's a shame too since it was this dev team that brought about a power I never took before, they giveth and they taketh away.

This is absolutely not true. The Paragon Studios dev team "left" snipe in Issue 23. Issue 24 was in beta, and there are clear indications in the code and data that the snipes were not going to be "left" in the state they are currently in, had the studio not been shut down. For example, the sequencers data contains half-finished moves called "QUICK SniperBlast" (Q_SniperBlast, Q_SniperBlast2, A_Q_Sniperblast and A_Q_SniperBlast2) for the real animations to be used in Quick Snipe, rather than the unfinished hack that exists in Issue 24 Beta with the blast firing on frame 0 and having broken FX and bad synchronization for multiple powers. The current animation tweaks are more in line with what would probably have hit the Live servers when Issue 24 was finished, so I am pretty sure the animation tweaks are going live regardless of what happens to any other changes. When it comes to snipes, I am treating this Beta as a direct continuation of Issue 24 Beta. They were definitely not finished. First off let me say a big thank you for getting this game back to us and in better shape than it was when it left. There's SO many new shinies to play with all due to the behind scenes coding your team has been able to understand and bring forth. I've had so many fresh things to play with across all the ATs so again thanks for that. I haven't gotten into speaking on the stuff that was worked on that wasn't available on live because I didn't have a true understanding on all the things you folks added on to so no finger pointing from me. Speaking on my experience I stumbled upon the insta-snipe not on my first favorite character to play because on a dom I never took snipe. But on my blaster I noticed when I hit BU or Aim I'd get this yellow ring around my snipe. So all it was was a little curiosity and the willingness just to ask in help what the deal was. Our community being helpful that it is responded and my mind was blown I could add snipe to my dom and my favorite character now has a fresh feel to it. The to-hitt really isn't all that hard to get and for a supposed intuitive game getting insta-snipe was pretty fun to get. If the intention is to dumb it down to make it available to all then maybe I'm suggesting that there's really an unknown about the snipe since it didn't make it to live originally and there's not really any explanation about how to achieve it easily available for the unwashed masses. I'd say spread the word about it's ease of attaining and change that kismet to say it's actually +to-hitt. Now if the intention is to nerf damage to bring things in line I'm not with you on this. If that's the case we should have a look at Titan Weapons uber stomp which with a good fury bar hits 16 good guys (or bad guys if you're one of those hero types) for 300 damage every 5 seconds or blaster nukes that charge by every mob and hit 16 enemies for 450 damage. I don't like going down the nerf rabbit hole, I'm so happy to find something fresh on my favorite AT on a power I never adjusted into my chains. Hope the discourse continues and thanks for listening!

This. I just don't understand why Doms get a nerf and a half out of this? The Damage scale from the original devs was obviously intentional because doms lacked in damage compared to other damage dealers and who has time to snipe on a primary control character? Controllers get access to radiation and a lot of other team friendly buff/debuffs. So if a dom is there for damage and is as squishy as a blaster shouldn't they be somewhat in comparison? I'm not saying doms should out damage the intended king dpser but there's very few tools in the damage kit for doms and this snipe was just a nice find for once. This past month has felt like the original devs finally threw doms a bone with at least dealing some good single target damage and now it's being reduced 1/3 but we get it to charge faster?! I don't need it to charge faster I have controls to lay out in the midst of fighting so when it gets back to charged I want that snipe to hurt. This whole thread seems like a lot of blaster players and no one that has played particular ATs like a dom. If you haven't played it to understand the playstyle and don't get why lowering something from hitting for 450-500 to 300-350 isn't a huge nerf why speak on it? Doms secondary is damage and the toolkit is kinda bare comparably. Maybe I should just run my Titan Weapon brute around and call it a day. Yay for variety. Please leave the dominator snipe as it is. We get to use a power we never ever took before.

As an avid dominator player I must say this impending tweak to dominator's snipe I abhor. As stated by Leandro himself he recognizes that doms do much less damage than blasters and corrs so why cut this one nice new gift of damage down a third for us? I'd rather you leave the recharge and damage base as is. I never took snipe on dominators before because I was always in the mix and didn't find snipe useful. With the insta-snipes its been such a godsend to dom damage. Yes it's much harder to build for the to-hit on a dom and I am fine with that going in I know how to get the most out of what I can. With the substantial damage decrease fast snipe wouldn't even be differentiated from the best regular high damage range attack in the secondary so why have it? Doms lead in with their controls, good doms won't play right if they're sitting back and sniping before they engage in the fight. I don't want a fast charging pitter patter, I already have access to plenty of those attacks. I want my slow charging boom stick! Maybe normalizing it across the board for all ATs like 3.0 damage scale at 15 sec recharge and a slight reduction in range and then 4.5 damage scale for slow snipe and keep the interrupt a little bit higher but less than 6. Pool power snipes yeah sure adjust it according to not being naturally inherent to the AT. Honestly I don't want any of this to change, this whole addition of fast sniping was to make taking snipe more useful. Yes I'm certain some changes are necessary due to probably being OP in PvP but that's the thing the devs never really grasped how to make their powers work well for both PvE and PvP. Case in point, Energy Transfer is the riskiest attack to use because you're sacrificing a bunch of your hp to amplify the damage you do to the target and in PvE it's correctly illustrated to do more ST damage than any other attack power as it should. In PvP because their wonky damage formulas calculates the damage you do to yourself into the damage formula to average out the damage per activation you get an ET that does more damage to you than it does the target. Snipe was given a buff by the original devs because it mostly wasn't viable, this just feels like a big step back to that.