Review of class balance

[DrRocket]

To begin with this is an excellent game and is very much fun, and what went into the game, specifically the various classes clearly were highly considered and addressed.

 

As I look at the game's original classes Tanker, Scrapper, Defender, Blaster and Controller, clearly follows the Gary Gigax teaming concept. As a result the pros and cons of these classes were defined by the developers, based on this old time team gaming concept.

 

Disclaimer: I may often refer to blasters, defenders and controllers, but my suggestion are also meant for their villain counterparts such as corruptors, dominators and brutes.

 

So far so good...

 

When City of Villains was released, new class sets with new balances were made available, and the developers had all the lessons learned on the problems from the first batch of classes to build upon and improve.

 

The developers did a fine job at making very robust classes, and the foundatins for departing from the Gary Gigax concept, and example of this good evolution is the enhancement to the tanks, brutes, scrapper's self heal, self recharge abilities which allows them to operate in both solo and group situations with out much dependency on support, not that the services of support are not appreciated. When I play my fire/axe tanker for instance, especially post incarnate, I can do a 50 mission and not sweat the odds, often I am in groups now with out support classes, and not miss them much. This is not a criticism, it is a compliment! Because it relieves the TF or mission organizer the burden of trying to balance the team for survivability purposes. I no longer see the mandatory we got to have an empath healer anymore  statement which was ever present during the live days and the entire group was waiting for a healer to sign up, this is great for flexibility but sad for the empath healer whose services are not as valued as they once were.

 

Once I again, this is not a criticism, its an observation of a trend that I very much like, a trend that gives team organizers a lot of freedom, which is great for all players.

 

So if we are going to depart from the hard core Gary Gigax frame of mind: Tank takes the hits (Warrior), don't hit hard (this is changing "brute" and incarnate), Defender keeps the tank going (Cleric), Blaster/Controller puts the damage and controls the battle (Mage), and Scrappers sneak in a deliver killer damage (Thief). Do note that the other classes follow same concept Blaster/Corruptor, Controller/Dominator, etc.

 

So how can we work on the support classes, so they can be more likely that players would actually be just as happy to play them as opposed to a melee type? After all, check the trend on team compositions from the "live" days to today's, and you will notice a  decrease in the support numbers, after all why play them, when there are more robust classes to be played? For example I had a choice between a blaster and sentinel? I had an energy/energy blaster in the live days, so I wanted to reproduce the character for nostqalgia purposes, but then I stumbled on a new class call sentinel. Lets see, Blaster hits hard, wow hard, but even a menion with status effect can lay the blaster low, you hit one minion, and then the status effect spam goes-off at the blaster (at one time selected mobs had ranged effects, now just about all of them do in some form or other), the blaster is, as expected, stunned, held, or whatever and a few moments later dies. Not a heroic picture here. Then good gravy! a Sentinel hits nearly as hard, and has status effect protection! I can really have fun kicking baddies left and right! So I went with the sentinel over the blaster, it frankly was a no brainer. The damage over time of a sentinel smokes the blaster for there is no status effect avoidance down time or run for your life practices and come back for second shot or inspiration "junkie" dependency.

 

So how to envigorate the Blaster/Corruptor?

    For myself the main reason I stirred away from the Blaster was the total helplessnes to status effects (not a fan that I have to have a tray full of break free inspirations in order to play, when this is not a consideration to many other classes). On the other hand, I do want to keep some semblance of game balance but not in a Gary Gigax mentallity, in other words give the servitude clause on support classes their retirement papers because their "live time" role truly no longer exists as it once was.

 

    So for the blaster, they have AIM which temporarely boosts their accuracy and damage, why not say their focus is so great that they get comprehensive status effect while under these conditions, thus if you run accuracy you have say a  LT's MAG status protection which last the entire recharge duration.

 

    The question what about balance?

 

    Good question, here is how balance works:

 

    Tank and Brutes get toggles, they are on and don't have to pay much attention to them to be protected, so nice.

   Scrapper/Stalkers get usually a single activation power that they can place in auto if they are smart, not bad but some attention to it is requried.

   Blaster/Corruptor: They have to be really playing attention to AIM to keep it going, note that the pluss to accuracy and damage may be gone but the status effect protection persists, it could be toggled if the blaster is wise.

 

Second Balance perspective and the most important:

 

   The pragmatic levels of MAG protection does not need to be the same either. I can't  find the actual class status effect table that shows what MAG values each class has, but as I remember the Tank had a Mob Elite Boss level set of protection, and Scrappers have Boss level rprotection, so why not give the Blaster/Defender/Controller the means to attain LT mag level? In my case, for the blaster I suggested using AIM as a means to activate teh protection.

 

 

Lets talk about Controllers/Dominators...

 

You would think that a controller/dominator would know all the ins and outs of status effects and thus should be the hardest to be affected by them, and yet they are just as helpless as the Blaster and Defender class types. So how do we remedy that as proposed for the blaster.

 

I would propose that each time a controller/dominator uses a control power, they activate a temporary MAG level equivalent to a tank, it is rather short lived say 1 minute, but to make it fun, the time is stackable, so if they are spamming their holds or what not their status effect duration increases, so if in that one minute they spammed say 3 other attacks; hold, confuse, and slow for example their status effect timer would increase by 3 minutes. 

 

One comment about pets, the fire controller is limited to 3 pets where there is no control over. A master mind has 6 pets or more with total control, a clear case of old thinking versus new thinking. At one time the controller could spawn 5 imps and if they have very fast recharge times, could have a second or even a third batch of imps, which quickly unbalanced the game. I get it. Why not give the controller her 5 imps back, and raise the maximum number of imps cap from 3 to 5? and maybe let the controller control the imps. A bif difference between the controller and mastermind is that the mastermind's pets actually have powers.

 

Other controller classes with pets such as illusion, should have their numbers revised along the lines of the Mastermind.

 

 

Lets talk about the Defender...

 

    They actually have the same helplesness to status effects as all the other support classes, so how do we fix it and keep some sort of balance?

 

    My suggestion is to remove the limitation they can't affect themselves. Thus the same buff they can give to any other class, they can give to themselves. The powers with area effect protection such as steamy mist and other like effects provide a full set of status protection, but only at minion level and are stackable.

 

     I really could never get my arms around the concept, I know how to make you tougher and heal you, but I just can't figure how to do exactly that for myself. I suspect this was a Gary Gigax based effort to encourage Defenders to focus in being good team supporters which under how the game mechanics were was actually quite needed.

 

    It may be required to ensure that the various defender powers that provide status effect protection mitigation be looked at, in order to ensure uniformity across the various subclasses (storm, empathy, kinetic) spectrum about LT level mag protection which are of course stackable. Thinking of clear mind, O2 boost, etc.

 

    Lastly let defenders do full damage regardless if they are soloing or not, I get the concept that under the Gary Gigax mindset their damage was reduced as an encouragement to focus in being a good support character. With the new game's environment the encouragement to be support focused is no longer valid. Let me explain, why I believe it is no longer valid: A few days ago, I was playing my Emp/Water Defender, and thinking as I did in live days: "I am going to focus in healing and buffing". It did not take long before I was bored, there was not much healing needed, the tanks and scrappers healed themselves, their mag protections were so outstanding that my clear mind was not even needed. So all I had left to do to was to spam clear minds to other defenders, controllers, and blasters if any in my group, as a result the use of clear mind was hardly ever used. Eventually I gave up being a good healer/buffer and went into the aggressive, did any one died? No, no one died while I did this. Sure I kept an eye in the life bars, so I could stop attacking and do some healing, a mezzed player was instructed to in type in chat, held and they were a click on their name in the team menu away followed by a click on clear mind.  So I do not see a logical reason to handicap their damage any further.

 

   Now I spoke often in examples of blasters, defenders, controllers but the same suggstions applies to their corresponding classes and no slight to them was ever intended.

 

Thank you for reading and thinking of this

 

Dr Rocket

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 21, 2019 by DrRocket
typos

[DougGraves]

The problem with controllers is that they have too much control.  And that is a result of recharge.  You get several control powers with 90 seconds, 3 minutes or longer recharge.  So in theory you cannot rely upon them every fight and have to use them sparingly.  But with just recharge IOs you have so much control by level 32 you are probably skipping most of it.  As an electric/ controller I can basically just use static field for 90% of fights on a team and ignore my other control powers.

 

What I want with a controller is not to trade the secondary for damage and be a dominator - which also have too much control, but to lose half of my control powers and half of my buff/debuff powers and trade those for damage.

 

The game was designed with single target damage, aoe damage, defense/resistance, control, and buff/debuff and you get 2.  But they also somehow thought players would have far fewer powers than they have.  Partly this changed with fitness becoming inherent, but also people play at high levels and not low levels.

 

But the game would be better if you had 3, but were less good at each of them.  At least better for me.

[Apparition]

IMO, there are no problems with Blasters.  For me, they're plain better than Sentinels.  I have a level 50+3 tricked out Dual Pistols/Temporal Manipulation Blaster.  She's almost as sturdy as a Brute (I've actually tanked ITFs with her), and very significantly out DPSs any Sentinel.  As for mez protection, slotting the Defiant proc in my level 1 attack and taking Tier 4 Clarion Core Destiny solved that issue.

[DrRocket]

DougGraves:

 

    Excellent point to something I did not address and that is attack damage, I was mostly focused in survivability. I like the concept of replacing redundant control powers for ranged and possibley AOE damage powers. But perhaps an easy fix, is to increase the damage of the control powers, say just raise them by 1 level of damage delivery, say moderate goes to high.

 

Just a thought

[DrRocket]

7 minutes ago, Apparition said:

IMO, there are no problems with Blasters.  For me, they're plain better than Sentinels.  I have a level 50+3 tricked out Dual Pistols/Temporal Manipulation Blaster.  She's almost as sturdy as a Brute (I've actually tanked ITFs with her), and very significantly out DPSs any Sentinel.  As for mez protection, slotting the Defiant proc in my level 1 attack and taking Tier 4 Clarion Core Destiny solved that issue.

Good point, but the nice state to be as you describe, does not happen until you reach incarnate. I desire more robustness at much lower levels, despite that today going from 1 to 50 may not take long. But if you are going to take your time and enjoy the content, having some status protection would come handy, since too many mobs spams them. I often regarded status effects as a support class as the "I Win" button to be used by mobs.

[golstat2003]

Interesting. I never found it hard running on a blaster pre-Incarnates. I still dont'. Especially with insp being there. I don't mind their glass cannon nature.. A nice change of pace from melee classes.

[DougGraves]

1 hour ago, Apparition said:

IMO, there are no problems with Blasters.  For me, they're plain better than Sentinels.  I have a level 50+3 tricked out Dual Pistols/Temporal Manipulation Blaster.  She's almost as sturdy as a Brute (I've actually tanked ITFs with her), and very significantly out DPSs any Sentinel.  As for mez protection, slotting the Defiant proc in my level 1 attack and taking Tier 4 Clarion Core Destiny solved that issue.

 

To me this says there is a problem with blasters.  They really are just bad design.  The game is not about risk vs reward it is about time vs reward.  If a tanker or controller can solo a mission in 10 minutes and a blaster can do it in 5 minutes a blaster is just better than a tanker.   The trade off would be if blasters can do some missions in 5 minutes are defeated often enough that the average time for doing a mission is 10 minutes.

 

of course they are not going to remove blasters from the game, and people want to solo with blasters, so we are stuck with damage AT's being the best ATs.

 

[Razor Cure]

Just skimming this..I dont KNOW why every AT needs to fit into this magical class set up. CoX is not DandD or anything else. The classes are distinct and also blur enough to allow multiple play styles.  They all 'work' (with varying degrees of awesome) for their Jobs, and I enjoy every single AT..besides Tanks. But that is just me. I think, if someone can have a great time on every AT but ONE, the devs did a lot right.

[Haijinx]

Blasters and Corruptors are not an AT pair.

 

Corruptors are the inverse of Defenders.

 

 Blasters have no analog.  Much like Masterminds and Sentinels. 

 

--------

Another thing to keep in mind is that this game is like a mmo retiree that got a new job at Walmart. 

 

Take advantage of its strengths, but stop trying to redesign it, Beta was 2 DECADES ago. 

 

 

[aethereal]

Gygax, not Gigax.  Also, I don't think that old-school D&D actually is significantly the origin of holy-trinity team roles.  Fighters in D&D were damage dealers, not just tanks, and in fact had relatively few tanking tools.  Thieves weren't really DPS: yes they had backstab, but it was difficult to use in combat.  Holy Trinity (tank/dps/heal) was created more by video games who had to find more of a combat role for D&D classes, than by D&D per se (which significantly balanced the classes through non-combat roles: thieves kinda sucked in combat but had a whole bunch of stuff only they could do).

 

Mez protection is a creaky mechanic in CoH, no doubt.  It kinda sucks that it's such a, to borrow an actual D&D term, save-or-die effect.  Most characters either have essentially total immunity to mezzes in PVE, or else get really screwed over by them.  It would be nice if there were some half-measures, if for example you could get partially affected by a hold which gave you a slow or a modest damage debuff, if a partial knockback caused you to have a very short stumble animation, etc.  Honestly, probably the best balance for mez protection we have in the game are the (somewhat reviled) clicky mez prot powers that don't just let you set up a toggle that you completely forget about afterward and which gives you nearly 100% ability to ignores mezzes.

 

But we shouldn't give blasters 100% mez immunity to everything forever the end.  If you like to play Sentinels (and I do!), play Sents.  Giving blasters some level of mez mitigation is find (note that there are anti-mez powers in at least a few blaster secondaries).

 

Defenders would be ridiculously, grotesquely overpowered if they could put their armors on themselves.  I don't enjoy playing buff sets, but hey, there are debuff Defenders.  And holy shit, the last thing that CoH needs is to make Defenders tougher than scrappers.

[Haijinx]

Keep in mind the blaster ATO proc (slotable at level 7)  can give you a couple points of stackable defiance like status protection.

[Lost Ninja]

I don't think that any of the archetypes mentioned (other than sentinels) are broken or need such sweeping changes. There are certainly under-performing sets within those ATs but that's more of a balance issue than a need for the whole AT to be changed.

 

The HC Devs have already said that Sentinels are going to changed because they don't performs as well as they should.

[Troo]

To the OP, eesh. I curse your wall of words! (semi-kidding)

Honestly, reads like some ATs like Blasters are just not for you. The point of view you have could be why there are Sentinels, couldn't it? Enjoy the Sentinel and it's improvements.

Please don't suggest changes to classes that work as intended and others are perfectly happy with. Please DO NOT MAKE CORRUPTOR SUGGESTIONS unless you play them a lot. 😎

 

5 hours ago, DougGraves said:

The trade off would be if blasters can do some missions in 5 minutes are defeated often enough that the average time for doing a mission is 10 minutes.

That is how it works.

The various archetypes have strengths and weaknesses.

IOs and incarnates can be used to close the gaps between archetypes as characters become more powerful.

[boggo2300]

8 hours ago, Apparition said:

IMO, there are no problems with Blasters.  For me, they're plain better than Sentinels.  I have a level 50+3 tricked out Dual Pistols/Temporal Manipulation Blaster.  She's almost as sturdy as a Brute (I've actually tanked ITFs with her), and very significantly out DPSs any Sentinel.  As for mez protection, slotting the Defiant proc in my level 1 attack and taking Tier 4 Clarion Core Destiny solved that issue.

to be fair, a 50+3 tricked out blaster should be out DPS'ing small countries

[oedipus_tex]

The only ATs that really bother me are Corrupter and Defender. They are too close in function. If I could have designed them from the beginning I'd have done something like this:

 

• DEFENDER:
  • Primary: Buff,
  • Secondary: Blast, but with the equivalent Controller pet instead of a Snipe
• CORRUPTER:
  • Primary: Assault (like Dominators) but with a Nuke 
  • Secondary: Buff

 

This would allow Corrupter to fill the missing Bard/Paladin/Ranger role. Assault sets can be designed to be mostly melee or mostly ranged in a way that Blast sets don't work.

[Vanden]

10 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

• CORRUPTER:
  • Primary: Assault (like Dominators) but with a Nuke 
  • Secondary: Buff

That might be okay now, but it would've left villainside without any ranged-focused ATs for years.

[Apparition]

57 minutes ago, Vanden said:

That might be okay now, but it would've left villainside without any ranged-focused ATs for years.

 

Yep, and it's far too late to change them now.  After playing Defenders for years, I much, much, much prefer Corruptors today.  I like doing more than five points of damage and bringing substantial buffs and debuffs to a team at the same time.

[Haijinx]

1 hour ago, oedipus_tex said:

 

 

This would allow Corrupter to fill the missing Bard/Paladin/Ranger role. 

This is a missing role?

[Riverdusk]

On 11/21/2019 at 10:29 AM, Apparition said:

IMO, there are no problems with Blasters.  For me, they're plain better than Sentinels.  I have a level 50+3 tricked out Dual Pistols/Temporal Manipulation Blaster.  She's almost as sturdy as a Brute (I've actually tanked ITFs with her), and very significantly out DPSs any Sentinel.  As for mez protection, slotting the Defiant proc in my level 1 attack and taking Tier 4 Clarion Core Destiny solved that issue.

This actually seems to be the more common thought I hear during my gaming time.  The devs seem to agree, as they've mentioned they plan to buff sentinels, although the thread I read compared them more to scrappers than blasters as what should be close to their baseline.  Just thinking of them as ranged scrappers I think is a better comparison myself.

 

My biggest pet pev balance issue among the AT's right now myself is resistance caps among the melee classes.  If it was up to me scrappers (and maybe stalkers) would be 80%, brutes would be 85%, and tanks would stay at 90%.  Would make playing a resistance based scrapper armor set not such an underwhelming choice and give tankers enough of a defensive edge that maybe the devs wouldn't be looking at needing to buff tank damage quite so much to try and compete.  I have a feeling without the need for brutes to be the  "red side tank" that existed when they first were created, something closer to that would have been done.

 

Now of course if it was changed all the brutes would be up in arms about being nerfed, and they'd have every right to feel that way, so yeah, it'll never happen. 

 

[Uun]

On 11/21/2019 at 3:18 PM, DougGraves said:

 

To me this says there is a problem with blasters.  They really are just bad design.  The game is not about risk vs reward it is about time vs reward.  If a tanker or controller can solo a mission in 10 minutes and a blaster can do it in 5 minutes a blaster is just better than a tanker.   The trade off would be if blasters can do some missions in 5 minutes are defeated often enough that the average time for doing a mission is 10 minutes.

The game isn't balanced around soloing. While provisions have been made to allow every AT to solo, the game is really designed around force multipliers. A tanker + blaster can complete a mission faster than 2 tankers or 2 blasters. Defenders, corruptors or controllers increase the damage and/or safety of everyone on the team, again permitting the team to complete missions faster. I rarely solo my blaster, not because I can't, but because I find it boring. I'd rather team with a tank and/or support. Same applies when I play my corruptor, controller or dominator.

 

To the OP - the idea that everyone is playing melee classes because they're superior is simply false. Also, blasters outdamage sentinels by 25% on damage scale alone (1.125 vs. 0.90).

[oedipus_tex]

1 hour ago, Vanden said:

That might be okay now, but it would've left villainside without any ranged-focused ATs for years.

I agree, but this is looking at the situation as it is now. I don't think a change like this would happen on these servers. If I was designing a City of Heroes v1.5 for a new server it's what I would consider.

 

53 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

This is a missing role?

In terms of character concepts, mostly yes. There isn't a melee-ish support class in CoX, although this character type is very common in the source comic book material, and its a common configuration in RPGs. Also, the Blast sets are used on 4 ATs but the Assault sets only once.

[Outrider_01]

On 11/21/2019 at 9:50 AM, DrRocket said:

Blaster hits hard, wow hard, but even a menion with status effect can lay the blaster low,

Blasters are the damage AT, the damage applicator.  They have mostly damage in the primary and a lot of melee attacks in the secondary to fight at range or close quarters.  As for status effects, they give that up for the ability to adapt to the situation at hand and use all the tools at their disposal from both sides of the power sets.

 

On 11/21/2019 at 9:50 AM, DrRocket said:

Sentinel hits nearly as hard, and has status effect protection!

So play a watered down blaster, the range attacks are not special.  Turns out that spines has a long single target and there are many melee cone attacks that are incredibly short.  Sentinels are just dumb down blasters + scrappers.

 

On 11/21/2019 at 9:50 AM, DrRocket said:

The damage over time of a sentinel smokes the blaster for there is no status effect avoidance down time or run for your life practices and come back for second shot or inspiration "junkie" dependency.

Right right.  Blasters are burst and short sustained with higher AoE caps that have a range of control and melee powers.  Sentinels have mediocre range compared to a blaster and only at half the distance with no real melee attacks.  Blasters are front loaded and smart ones keep themselves alive, Sentinels can stay alive longer but really how hard is that compared to a tank/brute/scrapper/stalker?

 

On 11/21/2019 at 9:50 AM, DrRocket said:

So how to envigorate the Blaster/Corruptor?

How?   One is Offensive/Offensive while the other is Offensive/Support.  So, damage AT vs a reverse defender.  Blasters have an active inherent damage buff from every attack and stacks for a short time, Corrupter is an oddball that I think acts like scrapper critical hits and totally random or everything is dying fast in the groups I am in.

 

 

Haven't looked at all the new blaster power sets but most tend to follow the same trends, so I am gonna admit that.

 

On 11/21/2019 at 9:50 AM, DrRocket said:

Lets talk about Controllers/Dominators...

 

You would think that a controller/dominator would know all the ins and outs of status effects and thus should be the hardest to be affected by them, and yet they are just as helpless

Gonna face palm at this statement, confused if you know what they can do?  A control AT, helpless to status effect?  They can damn well stack it on a group, provided you have enough ACC and the NPC/AV/Boss isn't to high or the triangles are down.  Why does an AT that prevents the enemy from acting need status effect?  Can you say OP?  Yes, they can get hit hard but all AT suffer the same while some take longer.  Its just control AT make it harder for the bad guy to do it unless lady luck is against them.

 

On 11/21/2019 at 9:50 AM, DrRocket said:

One comment about pets, the fire controller is limited to 3 pets where there is no control over. A master mind has 6 pets or more with total control, a clear case of old thinking versus new thinking.

You do realize, controllers are not masterminds.  Masterminds are designed around pets, controllers around lock down powers.  The pet at the end is just the icing on the cake.  Or do you want to see an Earth/ or Ice/ with multiple pets?  It would break the game just as much as when Fire/ could summon more then 1 set of imps, but having multiple imps causing havok is their thing since fire is lock down + damage where as Earth lock down + debuff + tank pet.

 

On 11/21/2019 at 9:50 AM, DrRocket said:

Lets talk about the Defender...

 

    They actually have the same helplesness to status effects as all the other support classes, so how do we fix it and keep some sort of balance?

Defenders are support force modifiers, they are the support class and they where designed that way.  Problem is, the game evolved to the point tankers the meat shields with lower damage are putting out massive amounts of damage.  But the role of a defender is still support.  Changing it would break the core design, as for tankers...WTF SS+Invulnerable?

 

On 11/21/2019 at 10:20 AM, DougGraves said:

The problem with controllers is that they have too much control.  And that is a result of recharge.  You get several control powers with 90 seconds, 3 minutes or longer recharge.  So in theory you cannot rely upon them every fight and have to use them sparingly. 

The controller is supposed to control, weird isn't it?  Yeah, they got butt loads of those tools but you got sleeps which wouldn't be good when fighting multiple Devouring Earth with their annoying buffing pets; one fire ball and the whole thing would be pointless.  Holds, lock down tight but the stuns are back up in case anything is missed and immobilize prevents those drunks from moving off.  They are tools to use in any situation, you just have to figure out which is more viable.

 

On 11/21/2019 at 12:18 PM, DougGraves said:

To me this says there is a problem with blasters.  They really are just bad design.  The game is not about risk vs reward it is about time vs reward.

It was never about risk vs reward vs time.  It was about the challenge of finishing the mission, not how fast.  Sure speed is nice but if you are a one trick pony blitzing in a few minutes what is the point of multiple ATs when one suddenly is better then the other?  You suddenly have a single boring FOTM AT.

 

Yes, CoH Homecoming is far different then CoH/V of yesterday.  To change it so much that everyone has status protection, suddenly you don't have multiple character ATs just plain boring Supermans.

[Rathulfr]

I started playing AD&D in 1978, and the OP's description bears no resemblance whatsoever to AD&D or Gary Gygax's original class designs.  That's just flat out wrong.  CoH's "archetypes" were modeled after classes in Everquest, not D&D. 

 

[Technically, Cryptic wanted to follow the "classless" model of the Champions P&P RPG, which was later loosely adapted for Champions Online.  However, during alpha testing of CoH, player-testers wanted the more rigid structure they were familiar with from EQ (this was pre-WoW, if you recall), and Cryptic wanted to appeal to that same market, so they adopted EQ's class model.]

 

Next, I've never been so tempted to just "/jranger" anything so hard in these past 7 months.  But I'll be nicer to the OP and just say "no, thanks!"

 

 

Edited November 28, 2019 by Rathulfr

[Omega-202]

A lot of what the OP is saying about Blasters is just wrong.  Others have already gone into it, but I really don't think the OP really knows how the ATs work to make a proper suggestion for changes.  If you don't understand the current situation (which the OP obviously doesn't), then nobody should take your suggestions seriously.

[boggo2300]

Honestly in reply to the OP on my blasters I usually never use break free's at all, it never comes up,  mezz is a problem for lesser AT's!!