Focused Feedback: Blaster Secondary Revamp

[Coyote]

7 hours ago, csr said:

It's still in the neighborhood performance-wise of those similar powers (LR and Shield Charge), so for any suggested change to be seriously considered I think it's going to have to be a minor buff at best, or simply a clever mechanic that captures someone's fancy.

 

I really REALLY just want a 1% Knockdown chance on it. Well, actually, I want about a 33% chance, but I'd settle for 1% so I can put a Force Feedback in there 😁

[Chris24601]

3 hours ago, Wavicle said:

Tac Arrow's shtick is that it's a Blaster version of Trick Arrow.

That’s not what I mean by shtick... that’s fluff. Mechanically it’s immobilize and hold are bog standard Blaster stats. It’s got a fairly mundane build-up and sustain powers.

 

In short, other than the bow graphics there is absolutely nothing that makes the set stand out from the rest of the Blaster secondaries except of course that it has no melee attacks at all.

 

Letting it have the 80’ range on the net and ice arrows would give it something to make it stand out from Fire’s DoT or the more stackable debuffs of sets like Dark or Atomic or Cold.

[Arcadio]

1 hour ago, Chris24601 said:

That’s not what I mean by shtick... that’s fluff. Mechanically it’s immobilize and hold are bog standard Blaster stats. It’s got a fairly mundane build-up and sustain powers.

 

In short, other than the bow graphics there is absolutely nothing that makes the set stand out from the rest of the Blaster secondaries except of course that it has no melee attacks at all.

 

Letting it have the 80’ range on the net and ice arrows would give it something to make it stand out from Fire’s DoT or the more stackable debuffs of sets like Dark or Atomic or Cold.

You get free accuracy in the sustain. There's kb protection, +rech, and +def in a toggle. Basically a second nuke in OSA. And again, everything can be used at range. Is there a reason it needs a range buff as well? Is it underperforming?

[Indystruck]

I'm still not impressed with Touch of the Beyond. In comparison to the former Elec sustain, even, at least that had a big bonk and everything was on it's ass and it did something effectively. ST Terrorize is.... well. It wasn't good enough for Touch of Fear, which got much better within the same patch. And I feel like the unenhanceable PvE hold component being added in is acknowledgement of that fact without actually doing much to change it. I suppose if you're soloing and running 1x/+1 it's effective at keeping something locked down if you need to go AFK right then. Just put it on autofire and... it'll still there be when you get back, just, the enemy will have only attacked you every now and then.

[Jacke]

I read through all 20 pages.

 

Devices' Gun Drone.  Love the power, love the added resistance.

 

But the Gun Drone expires and blows up.  It didn't used to do that.  I see Malta has Gun Drones that don't blow up all by themselves, so why can't I?  Do I have to join Malta to get a Gun Drone without a deadline?

 

With a reasonable amount of recharge, a Gun Drone can be resummoned as soon as it expires.  Having to resummon a Gun Drone that times out and isn't killed by enemy action is just administrative burden and an irritant.  I see little benefit to the game for this expiration.  (And the same applies to Traps' Force Field Generator and Dark Miasma/Darkness Affinity's Dark Servant.)

 

Please remove the expiration timer on Gun Drone.  I have to kill the Malta Gun Drones, make Malta have to kill mine.

 

Darkness Manipulation.

 

A signature of many Dark powersets is stealth.  Enough of them to allow all Dark/Dark characters to have a primary or secondary power that provides stealth.  But not for Dark/Dark Blasters and Dark/Dark Dominators.  Adding stealth to Dark/Dark Dominators may be rather tricky.  But let's talk Blasters here.

 

Darkness Manipulation should have a stealth power.  Dark powersets have gotten their stealth powers as their Tier 5 or 6 toggle.  For Darkness Manipulation, that's Soul Drain and Touch of the Beyond, both click powers.  

 

For Darkness Manipulation, I think a better choice is adding 35ft of stealth to the toggle Death Shroud.  And like the new Dynamo, when concealed, have the damage aura suppressed so stealth isn't broken.

 

Power ranges.

 

I was surprised at what I didn't know about mental powers.  I was sure they had extra range, 100ft on a lot of them.  And they do.  On Defenders and Corruptors.  And Mind Control's Mesmirize.

 

But not Blaster's Mental Blast.  Except for the snipe, Psionic Lance, long-ranged at 175ft.  All the others are at most 80ft.  Like any other Blaster blast powerset.

 

In fact, many Defender, Corruptor, and Controller powers have better ranges than equivalent Blaster powers.  Why?  Are Blasters not supposed to be the best at delivering ranged damage?  All four are squishy ATs.  Different in many details, but should they not have the same ranges for similar powers?  If Defender's Psychic Blast powers have 100ft ranges, so should Blaster's Psychic Blast powers.

 

I think Blasters should have range equality with the other squishy ATs.  This can't all get fixed in Issue 27 Page 1, as many of the underranged powersets aren't up for revamp.  But a start can be made.

 

So maybe Mental Manipulation's Subdual should have 100ft range, same as Defender's Psychic Blast's Subdue.

 

And if a powerset is all self-buffs and ranged powers, like Tactical Arrow, with 6 ranged powers and no melee-ranged powers, isn't being ranged a feature of that powerset?

 

Between Tactical Arrow and Trick Archery, 4 similar power pairs are already ranged the same, Flash Arrow (80ft), Glue Arrow (60ft), and ESD/EMP Arrows and the OSAs (70ft).  Only ENA and Ice Arrow are underranged on Blasters at 60ft; they should be 80ft, same as for Trick Arrow's EA and Ice Arrow.

 

Blaster's Primary Tier 1 and 2 powers and Secondary Tier 1 powers are good enough that they can use them even when mezzed.  Shouldn't they be good enough to go at least as far as the equivalent Defender powers?

 

I say all Blaster secondary Tier 1 powers that are ranged should get 80ft range.  Mental Manipulation's 80ft ranged powers should get 100ft, but maybe that should be done when fixing Blaster Psychic Blast in the same way.

 

Oh, one more thing.

 

Howe about some powers having alternate customizations matching larger weapons in their blast powersets, Archery, Assault Rifle, and Beam Rifle.  Some powers aren't up for this update (like Trap's Web Grenade and Mace Mastery's mace powers), but there's a few in Devices: Toxic Web Grenade, Taser, and Smoke Grenade.  Maybe too much for this update, but would be cool sometime in the future.

 

Edited November 11, 2020 by Jacke

[CaptainLupis]

13 hours ago, csr said:

That is an issue.  But including it in the damage formula would be a bit iffy unless you are going to have damage scale off the range to target when cast and make it counter-intuitively greater when further away.  I think balancing slow projectiles is more of a per-power thing than a damage formula thing.  Slow projectile attacks should probably consistently have better secondary effects.

Honestly, I don't think they should be added into the damage formula, the slow ones just need sped up. It's frustrating in teams when you fire off an AoE that crawls towards the targets only for others to wipe out the entire spawn before it gets anywhere near the target. But this isn't really the place for this discussion, I actually forgot it was the focussed feedback thread I was in when I posted last time, so I shall leave it at that in here.

[Chris24601]

7 hours ago, Arcadio said:

You get free accuracy in the sustain. There's kb protection, +rech, and +def in a toggle. Basically a second nuke in OSA. And again, everything can be used at range. Is there a reason it needs a range buff as well? Is it underperforming?

First LOL at the blaster OSA being considered anything other than garbage tier. Just previously I had to actually explain to someone because they were stunned no one was taking it. Short version, you have to cannibalize your existing build to slot it and at one slot it’s garbage... especially for a level 38+ power pick when ancillaries open up at 35.

 

To the point; Yes, actually... the reduced range completely disrupts the current playstyle of the set so much that those who play it would accept additional reduced magnitudes and halving the duration of the immobilize/hold in order to keep the 80’ range.

 

A big part of the problem is that, unlike newer MMOs, we don’t have a range indicator. We have to guess when we’re in range. When everything has the same range you can open with whichever power makes the most sense for the situation and just nudge closer until it activates.

 

But unless you want to open with ENA or Ice you have to guess whether you’re in range for them or not when you do your opening attack... and because both are part of people’s regular attack chains it can lead to situations where your first shot goes off and then the “derp” sound because your second shot isn’t in range... completely disrupting your rhythm.

 

The related problem is that, because of how enhancements scale when exemping, you can’t achieve a consistent range fix using enhancement slotting. You can only be assured of the fix at level 32+. So again, very disruptive because you can’t just see the range to a target, you have to eyeball it and exemping will change the ratios (to the point that enhancement slotting to get you back to 80’ at level 32, goes to just 66’ at level 15). Similarly, because it scales off the base range, set bonuses to range actually make the difference in range WORSE rather than reduce the problem.

 

The whole range thing is an utter mess for existing Tac Arrow players. 90% chance I’ll just shelve mine rather than deal with the frustration.

 

Again... all the Tac Arrow players posting here have said they would accept significant additional nerfs in other areas... reduce the base accuracy, halve the mez duration. Make the net arrow a mag 2 so you need to hit LTs twice just to immobilize them... just leave our range for ENA and Ice Arrow at 80’.

 

Its clear from your comments you don’t actually play the set... so take it from the actual users of the set that we would find half duration or mag 2 to be LESS disruptive to our playstyle than dropping the range from its current 80’ to 60’.

[Blackbird71]

1 hour ago, Chris24601 said:

First LOL at the blaster OSA being considered anything other than garbage tier. Just previously I had to actually explain to someone because they were stunned no one was taking it. Short version, you have to cannibalize your existing build to slot it and at one slot it’s garbage... especially for a level 38+ power pick when ancillaries open up at 35.

 

To the point; Yes, actually... the reduced range completely disrupts the current playstyle of the set so much that those who play it would accept additional reduced magnitudes and halving the duration of the immobilize/hold in order to keep the 80’ range.

 

A big part of the problem is that, unlike newer MMOs, we don’t have a range indicator. We have to guess when we’re in range. When everything has the same range you can open with whichever power makes the most sense for the situation and just nudge closer until it activates.

 

But unless you want to open with ENA or Ice you have to guess whether you’re in range for them or not when you do your opening attack... and because both are part of people’s regular attack chains it can lead to situations where your first shot goes off and then the “derp” sound because your second shot isn’t in range... completely disrupting your rhythm.

 

The related problem is that, because of how enhancements scale when exemping, you can’t achieve a consistent range fix using enhancement slotting. You can only be assured of the fix at level 32+. So again, very disruptive because you can’t just see the range to a target, you have to eyeball it and exemping will change the ratios (to the point that enhancement slotting to get you back to 80’ at level 32, goes to just 66’ at level 15). Similarly, because it scales off the base range, set bonuses to range actually make the difference in range WORSE rather than reduce the problem.

 

The whole range thing is an utter mess for existing Tac Arrow players. 90% chance I’ll just shelve mine rather than deal with the frustration.

 

Again... all the Tac Arrow players posting here have said they would accept significant additional nerfs in other areas... reduce the base accuracy, halve the mez duration. Make the net arrow a mag 2 so you need to hit LTs twice just to immobilize them... just leave our range for ENA and Ice Arrow at 80’.

 

Its clear from your comments you don’t actually play the set... so take it from the actual users of the set that we would find half duration or mag 2 to be LESS disruptive to our playstyle than dropping the range from its current 80’ to 60’.

Well said.  Yes, the lack of a range indicator certainly does not help the situation.

To be clear, I'm not happy about Mag reductions either and they would be painful to live with.  But for Archery/Tac Arrow, range is life.  Pushing us into "melee range" destroys the playability of the characters.  Yes, I know 60' is not melee, but that was the stated intent of the change, and I challenge that intent as being an insufficient justification for these changes.

[Vanden]

5 hours ago, Blackbird71 said:

 Yes, I know 60' is not melee, but that was the stated intent of the change, and I challenge that intent as being an insufficient justification for these changes.

Yeah, no. The stated intent of the change was to normalize ENA with other Blaster t1 immobilizes. Outright lies like this do nothing to help your case.

[Blackbird71]

55 minutes ago, Vanden said:

Yeah, no. The stated intent of the change was to normalize ENA with other Blaster t1 immobilizes. Outright lies like this do nothing to help your case.

Excuse you?  Please go back to the very first post in this thread:

 

On 10/24/2020 at 5:41 AM, Jimmy said:

Blaster Secondary Revamp

After the game shut down, several new Blaster secondary sets were developed (eg: Tactical Arrow, Atomic Manipulation, Plant Manipulation), but these sets were generally quite overtuned in the crowd control department, whilst also lacking in incentives to get into melee range - both of these factors contributed towards the sets being a tad too safe.

 

 

(boldface added for emphasis)

 

I do not appreciate accusations of falsehood, and I believe you owe me an apology.

 

[Arcadio]

9 minutes ago, Blackbird71 said:

Excuse you?  Please go back to the very first post in this thread:

 

 

(boldface added for emphasis)

 

I do not appreciate accusations of falsehood, and I believe you owe me an apology.

 

TA still is still "lacking in incentives to get into melee range," the problem that is being addressed according to that statement is "the sets being a tad too safe."

[Coyote]

15 minutes ago, Blackbird71 said:

these sets were generally quite overtuned in the crowd control department, whilst also lacking in incentives to get into melee range - both of these factors

 

I think that the phrase "whilst also" implies that crowd control and lack of incentives to get into melee range are two separate items. The fact that later it is stated that "both of these factors", implying that they are different factors makes it more certain.

 

So... logically, these sets were overtuned in the crowd control department. AND ALSO BUT SEPARATELY didn't have incentives to get into melee range. Tactical Arrow still doesn't, but how is that related to having a 60' range on the Immobilize? Several of the other changes were about melee attacks for the secondaries, but that didn't affect TA. But that's not the same thing as saying that TA's Immobilize had its range shortened in order to incentivize getting into melee range. And it makes no sense, to argue that 60' = melee range.

 

Now, if the Devs would state that Immobilizes had their ranges shortened to 60' in order to encourage the use of 7' melee-range attacks, heh, okay, you'll be right. But otherwise, they look like separate items to me. 1: incentivize melee range with better attacks, and 2: fix their crowd control.

Edited November 11, 2020 by Coyote

[Jacke]

6 hours ago, Blackbird71 said:

Well said.  Yes, the lack of a range indicator certainly does not help the situation.

To be clear, I'm not happy about Mag reductions either and they would be painful to live with.  But for Archery/Tac Arrow, range is life.  Pushing us into "melee range" destroys the playability of the characters.  Yes, I know 60' is not melee, but that was the stated intent of the change, and I challenge that intent as being an insufficient justification for these changes.

 

30 minutes ago, Vanden said:

Yeah, no. The stated intent of the change was to normalize ENA with other Blaster t1 immobilizes. Outright lies like this do nothing to help your case.

 

@Vanden, that's not the intent @Blackbird71 is referring to.  He did not lie.

 

This is the intent @Blackbird71 was referring to, from the original i27p1 patch notes and as clarified by @Captain Powerhouse.  Emphasis added.

 

On 10/24/2020 at 6:41 AM, Jimmy said:

Blaster Secondary Revamp

After the game shut down, several new Blaster secondary sets were developed (eg: Tactical Arrow, Atomic Manipulation, Plant Manipulation), but these sets were generally quite overtuned in the crowd control department, whilst also lacking in incentives to get into melee range - both of these factors contributed towards the sets being a tad too safe.

 

On 10/26/2020 at 8:53 PM, Captain Powerhouse said:

When we say we want to give more incentives to get into melee range, we mean that we want the melee powers that blasters get to be more useful. This is not about forcing all blasters to get into melee, but to reward the use of these powers beyond raw concept characters or set mules. No one will be forced to jump into melee range with a set they would not do so in the past. I could had phrased that part of the patch notes a lot better and avoided some confusion.

 

Tactical Arrow just has self-buffs and ranged powers.  There are no TA melee powers that need to be made more useful.

 

With many indoor maps of small size, often there's little benefit to having greater range.  But when we can use range, having similar ranges is vital in the current City of Heroes game.  Most recently well explained by @Chris24601. 

 

8 hours ago, Chris24601 said:

To the point; Yes, actually... the reduced range completely disrupts the current playstyle of the set so much that those who play it would accept additional reduced magnitudes and halving the duration of the immobilize/hold in order to keep the 80’ range.

 

A big part of the problem is that, unlike newer MMOs, we don’t have a range indicator. We have to guess when we’re in range. When everything has the same range you can open with whichever power makes the most sense for the situation and just nudge closer until it activates.

 

But unless you want to open with ENA or Ice you have to guess whether you’re in range for them or not when you do your opening attack... and because both are part of people’s regular attack chains it can lead to situations where your first shot goes off and then the “derp” sound because your second shot isn’t in range... completely disrupting your rhythm.

 

He continues on to explain why these different ranges can't be easily fixed (see below) .  Others in previous posts have pointed out the shear expense of trying to compensating for these changes, even if there's a free respec for i27p1.

 

There will be consequences to introducing strongly significant changes to Tactical Arrow that its players do not considered justified and know will disrupt the play of their toons.

 

Some will continue playing /TA Blasters they love.  (I've played an Assault Rifle/Devices toon since 2006, so I know about loving toons the game doesn't love back.)  But a lot will just park their toons and play something else until the Wheel turns again and addresses Tactical Arrow.  Considering it took 14 years for another powerset, Trick Arrow, to finally have some love again is part of what drives this respectful pushback.

 

I've planned an Archery/Tactical Arrow Blaster.  With these changes to Tactical Arrow, that toon won't be created any time soon.

 

8 hours ago, Chris24601 said:

The related problem is that, because of how enhancements scale when exemping, you can’t achieve a consistent range fix using enhancement slotting. You can only be assured of the fix at level 32+. So again, very disruptive because you can’t just see the range to a target, you have to eyeball it and exemping will change the ratios (to the point that enhancement slotting to get you back to 80’ at level 32, goes to just 66’ at level 15). Similarly, because it scales off the base range, set bonuses to range actually make the difference in range WORSE rather than reduce the problem.

 

The whole range thing is an utter mess for existing Tac Arrow players. 90% chance I’ll just shelve mine rather than deal with the frustration.

 

Again... all the Tac Arrow players posting here have said they would accept significant additional nerfs in other areas... reduce the base accuracy, halve the mez duration. Make the net arrow a mag 2 so you need to hit LTs twice just to immobilize them... just leave our range for ENA and Ice Arrow at 80’.

 

Its clear from your comments you don’t actually play the set... so take it from the actual users of the set that we would find half duration or mag 2 to be LESS disruptive to our playstyle than dropping the range from its current 80’ to 60’.

 

 

 

[Vanden]

13 minutes ago, Jacke said:

This is the intent @Blackbird71 was referring to, from the original i27p1 patch notes and as clarified by @Captain Powerhouse.  Emphasis added.

Wrong. The line "incentives to get into melee range" only refers to changes to the actual melee attacks Blasters get, not any of the immobilizes, which is clear to any reasonable person. @Blackbird71 (and you, if you support his statement) is being intentionally misleading and misrepresenting Powerhouse's actual words on the subject by claiming otherwise.

 

14 minutes ago, Jacke said:

[...]this respectful pushback[...]

There is nothing respectful about blatantly misrepresenting the developers' comments on the subject.

Edited November 11, 2020 by Vanden

[Vanden]

34 minutes ago, Blackbird71 said:

(boldface added for emphasis)

 

I do not appreciate accusations of falsehood, and I believe you owe me an apology.

That line is not talking about Blaster immobilizes. Full stop.

[Jimmy]

Cool it guys. I don't want to perform thread surgery!

[Chris24601]

4 hours ago, Jimmy said:

Cool it guys. I don't want to perform thread surgery!

I agree.

 

One thing that can definitely be taken from the reactions though is that, at least for the Tac Arrow players, these range changes are definitely a passionate issue. I think that should also be considered when it comes to changes to the set and that perhaps nerfs to areas other than the range in ENA and Ice Arrow might be a way to tune the set that won't spike emotions quite so much.

 

Is there any way we could try ENA with range 80' but say halve the immobilize duration and/or reduce the mag to 2" (or whatever you feel is a fair trade-off for keeping the 80' range) and something similar for ice arrow in one of these page builds? Just to see how its received relative to the current range reductions?

 

Maybe we're wrong about how disruptive the trade-offs to keep the range at 80' would be to our playstyle (just in a different way)... but it'd be really nice to feel that for ourselves, because there's a lot of passion behind the 80' range and where there's passion, logical arguments are less effective than letting us actually feel what those trade-offs to keep the range would be.

[Wavicle]

I will definitely be taking and slotting OSA on my /TA Blaster. Yes, it will require redesigning the build. That’s ok. That’s what one normally does when respeccing a toon after a power set has been nerfed or otherwise heavily altered.

[Coyote]

I will also be taking and slotting OSA on my Ice/TA Blaster. Alternating OSA+Bonfire and Blizzard on alternate spawns will stack with Ice Storm and Glue Arrow and clear spawns of minions very nicely.

 

Also, for that reason, I'm not in the slightest bit bothered by the range modifier on Entangling Arrow. Could be because Frost Breath is already shorter, could be that I'm already worrying about denying movement for multiple mobs so they can't get out of damage patches, but slotting up Glue Arrow with Dam/Slow and stacking the other powers on top really takes care of mob movement. Sure, they can move around at 10% speed. That's very, very slow... and 60' is easily enough range to Immob a target that's at the movement floor. Well, unless it's a Warwulf or other Slow-resistant mob (but many of those are often resistant to Immobs anyhow, so... still not a big loss there).

[ForeverLaxx]

What I don't get is that they leave the Psy secondary with "extended range" because Psy powers historically have more range than default, but Blaster Psy Blast is stuck with 80 range despite Defender Psy Blast being at 100 range. It's clear that Blasters are looked at differently when comparing like sets, so why can't they be looked at differently when comparing in-set? Tactical Arrow has zero reasons to go into Melee and is built to support a fully-ranged style. Yes, 60 is still ranged, but when you're entire playstyle is built around the original 80 range, having to hop back and forth to account for multiple, different ranges is a huge playstyle disruption. Dark Blast needs to be adjusted for this same reason, but that's another thread for another day.

 

There's no reason for Tac Arrow to have its range reduced that isn't just a homogenization sweep. To drive that point home, all the other sets got their Immob increased from 50 to 60 to "match" each other, with no regard for what the set actually does or what kind of style it's trying to impart on the player. I will never support change for change's sake.

[Wavicle]

3 minutes ago, ForeverLaxx said:

What I don't get is that they leave the Psy secondary with "extended range" because Psy powers historically have more range than default, but Blaster Psy Blast is stuck with 80 range despite Defender Psy Blast being at 100 range. It's clear that Blasters are looked at differently when comparing like sets, so why can't they be looked at differently when comparing in-set? Tactical Arrow has zero reasons to go into Melee and is built to support a fully-ranged style. Yes, 60 is still ranged, but when you're entire playstyle is built around the original 80 range, having to hop back and forth to account for multiple, different ranges is a huge playstyle disruption. Dark Blast needs to be adjusted for this same reason, but that's another thread for another day.

 

There's no reason for Tac Arrow to have its range reduced that isn't just a homogenization sweep. To drive that point home, all the other sets got their Immob increased from 50 to 60 to "match" each other, with no regard for what the set actually does or what kind of style it's trying to impart on the player. I will never support change for change's sake.

You’re clearly not meant to be able to keep enemies immobile at your maximum range.

[ForeverLaxx]

1 minute ago, Wavicle said:

You’re clearly not meant to be able to keep enemies immobile at your maximum range.

So clear that Psy gets to continue doing it, despite having powers that want enemies to be close in order to function.

 

I will never support this change, no matter how "clear" it must be for homogenization to be acceptable.

[xl8]

 Electrified Net Arrow

• Range reduced from 80ft to 50ft to be in line with other Blaster Manipulation T1 Immobilize powers

I'd like to see this stay at 80 feet to be in line with the character concept--excellent shot, no super powers to speak of.
It's the 1st pick and rarely used by most players.
Keep some advantages among the sets. Plz don't genericise everything.

 

And this 1 too...
 Ice Arrow

• Range reduced from 80ft to 60ft to be in line with other Blaster Manipulation ST mez powers

Edited November 12, 2020 by xl8
Ice

[xl8]

14 hours ago, Wavicle said:

You’re clearly not meant to be able to keep enemies immobile at your maximum range.

I would agree, but... it's ONE enemy. You still get mob rushed.

[Coyote]

2 hours ago, xl8 said:

I would agree, but... it's ONE enemy. You still get mob rushed.

 

This is why I honestly am not getting the "I'm quitting my TA character because my SINGLE TARGET Immobilize has had its range reduced". I'm using AoE Slows more than a ST Immob, because there are hardly any situations where I have only one target I care about, and when I do, it's Freeze Ray + Ice Arrow, which means the Immob is irrelevant. Honestly, the only time it matters is if you're trying to keep an AV in place, and there the range isn't very important.