I really don't like the sniper changes.

[eiynp]

iirc they eventually realized that animation time was important and balanced around it, they just never went back and redid animation times (other than removing redraw)

[Jeneki]

The blaster primaries first and second power were reanimated to bring the animation time into line with each other.  I believe this change happened at the same time defiance was updated to use those two powers while mezzed, but I could be wrong.  This resulted in some sets getting a huge boost (electric was quite noticeably faster) and some sets getting slightly slower (ice's second power slowed down a lot).

 

[Novacat]

It also hit Radiation's first attack quite hard.

[Obitus]

Though I'm not particularly moved by the argument that Doms are unfairly penalized under the new system (because Doms have always been extraordinarily powerful, especially in comparison to Blasters), I don't think there's any harm in leaving fast snipes, even unconditional fast snipes, at their old damage scale.  Ranged damage builds have always lagged behind Scrappers/Brutes (with the occasional Tanker even matching or exceeding the best Blaster primaries) in single-target damage.  Fast snipes, even overpowered ones, won't suddenly make ranged damage dealers unparalleled single-target powerhouses.

 

I also, obviously, agree that the DPA disparity among different damage sets (both ranged and melee) speaks to a longstanding flaw in the game's design paradigm.  The standardization of Tier 1 and 2 attacks in ranged sets was only a small step in the right direction.

 

Of course, given that our current devs work on a purely volunteer basis, I wouldn't expect them to address all, or even any of the above.  Having our game back, for all of its many minor flaws, is reward enough.

[Hjarki]

I think that, philosophically, increasing Blast set single target damage by a minor amount isn't necessarily a bad idea. The basic dynamic of melee for single target, ranged for multi-target remains even after the Sniper changes.

 

However, I'm not sure I'm onboard with the changes in terms of Blast set balance since it makes Fire Blast overwhelmingly powerful compared to other sets. Given the relative uselessness of most Blast set secondary effects, losing them to deal pure damage is a choice that most builds - especially Blaster and Corruptor builds - would make.

 

I think a more reasonable change would be to leave Sniper attacks as-is, but change Aim-style abilities to additionally remove interrupt time (for everything) while active.

[Novacat]

Rather than make fire blast unreasonable (not sure it is, myself; the glass cannon is still FAR glassier than the steel tanks are lacking gun), wouldn't it be the secondary effects that could use a mild upgrade to be worth it?

 

I mean you said it yourself: "given the relative uselessness of most Blast set secondary effects". Personally I think it's mostly just -Def which loses too much of its value as people start slotting IOs and the like (we cap at 95% hit chance after all), and -End which is too binary but would be a massive rework to fix in any way, though, but if the secondary effects are what's in trouble, it makes sense that those would be what gets the upgrading.

[Moka]

I'm still entirely behind the sniper changes. I'm still not entirely sure what the problem is with the changes themselves based off of everyone's arguments. People say it will break builds but I'm not sure what removing a kismet and maybe a few adjusted targeting slots is going to do lol. If your build was ENTIRELY dedicated to just getting perma snipe you're doing something wrong. And honestly I won't change most of my builds anyway because the to hit is nice.

 

I see a lot of people say snipe is still viable and easy to obtain before you're decked out at 50 but these same people are complaining about how they slaved over a hot mids sheet to get their snipe build. So I'm really curious: which is it? The changes felt wicked to me when I tested it on the server. I think this will give some powersets a much needed boost while leveling.

[Novacat]

The changes are good for the most part. Well the first iteration was a bit clunky, but they've been pretty smooth since then. And if one was building entirely to get to perma-snipe, well, now they don't have to waste so many slots in doing so anymore - a bit will let them keep the damage up, and the rest can go elsewhere.

 

The /Dev changes too for that matter.

[Moka]

The changes are good for the most part. Well the first iteration was a bit clunky, but they've been pretty smooth since then. And if one was building entirely to get to perma-snipe, well, now they don't have to waste so many slots in doing so anymore - a bit will let them keep the damage up, and the rest can go elsewhere.

 

The /Dev changes too for that matter.

VERY well said!

[Captain Powerhouse]

The changes are pretty much ready, but we are holding things until I finish work on dominators. There is one final pass on Devices too.

 

I was hoping to have that ready for testing by now, but RL has gotten in the way, the last couple weeks have been a bit bumpy.

[Novacat]

Anything notable for snipes or devices compared to what's currently on Justin?

[Captain Powerhouse]

Notes not at hand but nothing changing on snipes, Trip Mine getting love, Targeting Drone dropping the recharge buff and getting a small continuous +dmg buff in addition to a big damage buff to the first attack done from out of combat.

[Novacat]

Shinobi drone, eh? Interesting.

Tripmine was feeling just a teeny bit too long on the lay so a bit of love won't hurt. Fun to know!

[Bossk_Hogg]

Notes not at hand but nothing changing on snipes, Trip Mine getting love, Targeting Drone dropping the recharge buff and getting a small continuous +dmg buff in addition to a big damage buff to the first attack done from out of combat.

 

Will the trip mine/devices changes be ported to Trap too? That set really needs some attention. It's a support set barely on par w a blaster secondary, and doesn't play well with how high functioning teams work.

 

Similarly, Trick Arrow has a number of powers that are simply inferior versions of Tactical Arrow (glue arrow, ice arrow, EMP, and the always useless entangling arrow).

[Erydanus]

With all the work on Snipes I was wondering if Mu Mastery's snipe Zapp for scrappers and stalkers got looked at. It seems like it's doing completely the wrong damage, about 2/3 of what Ghost Widow's snipe does. (Zapp & Moonbeam do the same damage in regular blast sets). It's so far off I keep meaning to hop on Justin and double check it's not an error in Pine's because it has for scrappers 63.95 for Mu-Zapp and 144 for Soul-Moonbeam; for stalkers 76.74 for Mu-Zapp, and 127.9 for Soul-Moonbeam. Actually those numbers all make no sense, it's not even a proportional difference. It's like scrappers are using a tier 1 blast value and stalkers a tier 2 blast value for the electric snipe.

[Mezmera]

With all the work on Snipes I was wondering if Mu Mastery's snipe Zapp for scrappers and stalkers got looked at. It seems like it's doing completely the wrong damage, about 2/3 of what Ghost Widow's snipe does. (Zapp & Moonbeam do the same damage in regular blast sets). It's so far off I keep meaning to hop on Justin and double check it's not an error in Pine's because it has for scrappers 63.95 for Mu-Zapp and 144 for Soul-Moonbeam; for stalkers 76.74 for Mu-Zapp, and 127.9 for Soul-Moonbeam. Actually those numbers all make no sense, it's not even a proportional difference. It's like scrappers are using a tier 1 blast value and stalkers a tier 2 blast value for the electric snipe.

 

I don't have a scrapper but for my stalker I believe they have comparable epic pools.  The description for Zapp says it does Superior damage, the description for Moonbeam says Extreme.  So I think that's why the difference in damage output.  Not sure why they were differentiated in the first place, maybe Mu has some better attacks within that epic pool. 

[Erydanus]

It looks like this was addressed, I got on test and rolled 2 scrappers and both Zapp and Moonbeam did 1314 damage to an unsuspecting level 2 longbow mob.  If scrappers got fixed I'm guessing stalkers did too.

[marcussmythe]

It looks like this was addressed, I got on test and rolled 2 scrappers and both Zapp and Moonbeam did 1314 damage to an unsuspecting level 2 longbow mob.  If scrappers got fixed I'm guessing stalkers did too.

 

That is excellent to hear!  Ive got an alt coming up that I wanted to go Mu rather than Soul, but having one power be that much better than the other was forcing me onto an uncomfortable 'fluff vs crunch' dilemma.

[Novacat]

I don't have a scrapper but for my stalker I believe they have comparable epic pools.  The description for Zapp says it does Superior damage, the description for Moonbeam says Extreme.  So I think that's why the difference in damage output.  Not sure why they were differentiated in the first place, maybe Mu has some better attacks within that epic pool.

In fairness, the "minimal/moderate/high/superior/extreme" monikers were all over the place and rarely meant it. Felt deliberately misleading much of the time as far as blast sets went.

[Thezanman]

A good point that was brought up earlier in the thread is that ToHit debuffs can bring you below the fast snipe threshold on live, which is really annoying because it actually prevents you from having a functional attack chain with a lot of builds. I think it makes a lot more sense to do it this way, because it both removes the mandatory kismet and tactics tax from any build that actually wants to use snipes, and brings them closer to the thematic of a snipe with the longer version being used out of combat.

[Erydanus]

I personally thought the snipe change was made by the original devs to increase the value of Aim and similar powers. (Just my hunch.) When you're slotting for 95% accuracy why do you even take a power like Aim? It gives you a small damage boost (depending on AT) but if you have it and build up why not skip it and just use build up? Well wait, maybe Aim makes it so I can use this giant tactical nuke power that normally I can only use to pick off 1 obnoxious mob (like a Sky Raider engineer) before the fight starts and suddenly this power that is not in the attack chain, is more of a niche, just in case (unless I can hold the last mob while I charge it up and shoot him in the face) power becomes an I Win button.

[Thezanman]

Then the problem becomes, "when you're slotting for 22% ToHit (tactics and kismet) why do you even take a power like aim?".

[Obitus]

Of course, given that our current devs work on a purely volunteer basis, I wouldn't expect them to address all, or even any of the above.  Having our game back, for all of its many minor flaws, is reward enough.

 

I feel like the above quoted statement should prepend all of my suggestions.  That said, I'm wondering if there are any plans to port the Sentinel version of Sonic's Screech power to other ATs, in the wake of the snipe changes.  The set could use a reasonably heavy hitter that animates faster than the glacially slow Shout.

[Thezanman]

There are a lot of changes made to the sentinel versions of powersets that I'd like to see on other ATs, like Super Reflexes and Regeneration.

[Judasace]

It's the curse of the private server. Some guy gets a bee in his bonnet and doesn't have the intelligence to look at the big picture, but no one wants to rock the boat so they let this guy have his Insta Snipes for everyone, never mind that it throws off the blanace for the entire AT. Ice is no longer significantly better at its one trick, and is pretty much a bottom tier blast choice now.

 

This is basically similar to a beta oran "early access" game now, where changes are just made ona whim because one person feel like it and no one else on the team has the stones to stand up to that person and require a sanity check and an analysis of how the changes are going to inpact the game.

 

They'll claim that they put it on test for feedback...then went ahead and did exactly what they intended to do from the start, regardless of what the players actually wanted.

 

This is what it's like playing a D list game with amateur devs that din't actually know how to build a successful MMO or maintain a thriving MMO community. They'll make all heir little pet peeve changes, the vast majority will move on because it's not the game they once cared about any more. The server runners will keep going until the core group mocves on due toi real life (Full time jobs, marriage and family, etc) and since the community will be just a a skeleton of people that are stuck here due to nostalgia, there won't be anyone to run the servers.

 

Unfortunately, that's the reality of playing an amateur game. 5 years tops and the game will be gone again, this time never to return except for may a rando0m fan run server or two that is up when the guy running it can afford the monthly bill.

 

That's the future of CoH.