Playing at Extreme Range

[Gentoo]

I dusted off and played around with my Psi/Energy blaster today. Psi is the longest range blast set I'm aware of and Energy has Boost Range. It makes for a very unique playstyle. Useless in many maps, but so very unique on big outdoor maps, shooting stuff so far away that they can't return fire and having them just within draw distance.

 

Has anybody else tried this? If so, did you use his power combo or a different one?

[honoroit]

i have a psi/mental who enjoys the long range and boost from the psi snipe.

 

but with energy it must be other-side-of-town levels of boosting. (50% for 10s from using your snipe, which you can keep up almost constantly), and some ~59.6% from boost range... meaning over double, or over 350 feet for the second snipe cast!

[Snarky]

I have for years worked to devise ranged toons as fully long range.  I have a Beam Rifle Temporal Blaster that was my DPS go to for Really Hard Way Magisterium.  

 

Here is what all of my testing concluded....  Ranged Defense is anything not melee.  About 8 feet.  Most of the time being 150 away is both impractical and sacrifices opportunities of positioning and a bunch of stuff.  Like not being where the team is, getting buffs, getting left behind...   A set with a Ranged Nuke played at about 40-80 all the time is the money zone.  Cones, buffs, positioning etc.

[High_Beam]

But . . . But . . . It has electrolytes!

[srmalloy]

2 hours ago, Gentoo said:

Has anybody else tried this? If so, did you use his power combo or a different one?

I built my first character back on Live, an AR/EM Blaster, as an attempt to validate Jack Emmert's claim that "range was a Blaster's defense". It mostly worked, up until the devs went back and handed every mob in the game that didn't already have one a ranged attack and tweaked the ones that did, and now there are dozens of mob types whose 'secondary' ranged attack outranges Sniper Rifle with Boost Range active -- many of them shooting pistols.

 

Between that character and my Psi/EM Blaster, both of whom I recreated from Live, I discovered that there is an annoying knuckle in the game statistics. Past a certain distance -- I think it's 212 feet, but I'd have to refer back to my post here about it to get the correct distance -- you still get XP and drops for defeating mobs, but they don't count toward defeats for badges. I discovered this when I noticed my defeat count for Council Walkers wasn't increasing in Boomtown.

[Andreah]

13 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

Past a certain distance -- I think it's 212 feet, but I'd have to refer back to my post here about it to get the correct distance -- you still get XP and drops for defeating mobs, but they don't count toward defeats for badges.

Oof. Surely this is unintended and ought to be a fixable bug?

[Glacier Peak]

I did this for fun on my Ice/Cold Corruptor by replaying the Ouro incarnate introduction arc where the player gets max stats. Player range ceiling is 400ft and in some instances, depending on the player's settings, that's farther away then the enemy draw distance - let alone farther away the enemy's max range.

 

Other than that, not too many +Range set bonuses out there to try on anything other than the Psi/Energy the original poster mentioned in order to get the most out of the concept. 

[srmalloy]

1 hour ago, Glacier Peak said:

Other than that, not too many +Range set bonuses out there to try on anything other than the Psi/Energy the original poster mentioned in order to get the most out of the concept. 

It takes a bit of work, but any blaster primary can be tricked out with EM; the three-piece bonus for Blaster's Wrath is a range bonus (7.5%\10%for Superior), the two-piece bonus for Bombardment is 5%, and tier 3/4 Cardiac gives you another 20%. That gives you 35% to range before Boost Range, which is perma  with a Recharge in it's default slot. Ice, which doesn't get a snipe, doesn't benefit as much, though.

[Sakura Tenshi]

I thought blaster psi-blast doesn't benefit from the increased base range? I mean, otherwise you could probably get the same out of beam rifle or archery and energy manipulation.

[KC4800]

My AR/Dev is range focused. Have to watch though, my Full Auto easily reaches unintended groups with the newly widened cone. 

[honoroit]

5 hours ago, Sakura Tenshi said:

I thought blaster psi-blast doesn't benefit from the increased base range? I mean, otherwise you could probably get the same out of beam rifle or archery and energy manipulation.

theres a buff on the snipe, 50% for 10s, so with quick and a base cd of 12s, you can have it on all the time.

 

so psi Darts, the mental cones (in case from prior post)..

 

its quite effective.

[Snarky]

1 hour ago, KC4800 said:

My AR/Dev is range focused. Have to watch though, my Full Auto easily reaches unintended groups with the newly widened cone. 

the revamped AR is lovely

[KC4800]

9 hours ago, Snarky said:

the revamped AR is lovely

It really shines on zone event type stuff, like zombie apocalypse and the MSR.

[biostem]

One interesting side effect of dual pistols on sentinel, since their ice ammo also provides a 33% range buff, is consistently very long range AoEs from APP/PP and Incarnate judgements that don't suffer their normally-reduced range!

[Doomguide2005]

     I never built a character with trying to max range out as an overall build strategy but my Emp/Dark back in the day (pre-IOs) would sit up on the ledge of the War Wall in Crey's Folly and snipe Freaks with Moonbeam that occasionally I'd only know she hit by seeing the "you have defeated" pop up in her chat window along with the xp as they ran in panic from the first shot right out of sight.

[Gentoo]

Been enjoying playing around more with my Psi/Energy blaster, and fighting from far enough away seems to lose the agro too. Is that supposed to happen? If so... this could be a form of defence?

[Glacier Peak]

30 minutes ago, Gentoo said:

Been enjoying playing around more with my Psi/Energy blaster, and fighting from far enough away seems to lose the agro too. Is that supposed to happen? If so... this could be a form of defence?

That's probably more to do with the threat mechanics for the enemy than an unintentional side effect of range boosting effects. Like, if within melee range, then attack with melee, AoE, or range, and if not, use ranged attack or AoE. Once the target for the enemy leaves the max distance for ranged attacks, chase if threat level is below/ above 1. That's all my speculation though. 

[Gentoo]

1 hour ago, Glacier Peak said:

That's probably more to do with the threat mechanics for the enemy than an unintentional side effect of range boosting effects. Like, if within melee range, then attack with melee, AoE, or range, and if not, use ranged attack or AoE. Once the target for the enemy leaves the max distance for ranged attacks, chase if threat level is below/ above 1. That's all my speculation though. 

 

Not sure. I have nailed them repeatedly and they will run towards me a bit, then give up and walk back. If I alternate who I strike, I can keep firing at a pretty decent rate doing this without any of them actually coming to me.

[Without_Pause]

12 hours ago, Gentoo said:

Been enjoying playing around more with my Psi/Energy blaster, and fighting from far enough away seems to lose the agro too. Is that supposed to happen? If so... this could be a form of defence?

Unless you are soloing, I don't find it really useful defense. As Snarky mentioned, you are out of the zone of getting buffed or supported in general. Losing aggro might be neat, but I would rather be in range of various buffs. 

[Gentoo]

4 hours ago, Without_Pause said:

Unless you are soloing, I don't find it really useful defense. As Snarky mentioned, you are out of the zone of getting buffed or supported in general. Losing aggro might be neat, but I would rather be in range of various buffs. 

Definitely has a big downside, sure.

 

It isn't the most OP way to play.

 

But it is different, and variety is something I seek in this game.

[TheZag]

I decided to check out a sentinel on mids based off this topic.  I had the range of regular attacks up to 134 feet (up from 60).  I think the patron power ranged attack was 175ish but then the power went out at my house and now i have to start it over.

 

Edit:  i rebuilt it and the total range is 146 feet for all the regular attacks,  just shy of regular sniper attack range....but with a sentinel.  One patron ability shows 194 feet in mids but im not sure if cryo ammo range actually will apply ingame so i'll have to wait on that.

 

Edited September 14, 2023 by TheZag

[carroto]

On 9/12/2023 at 8:11 PM, srmalloy said:

you still get XP and drops for defeating mobs, but they don't count toward defeats for badges.

 

Thanks for this.  It might explain some strangeness I've seen when I'm hunting for "defeat X mobs" missions.  I like to do this when I can in zones with groups that are hostile toward one another.  So I can find a group fighting one another, do some damage to the mobs I need and get kill credit without getting too much aggro.  Helpful when the only mobs I can find are well above my level and hard to fight.

 

There have been times that I'll tag some of the mobs and leave them to be finished off by the others they're fighting, but even though I see the xp message show up, my "defeats required" count doesn't go down.  This must be the reason.  If I run off too far I don't get credit.

[Bionic_Flea]

I recently did make a psy/energy blaster with the goal of being max range.  He can snipe for about 1500 damage from 525 feet away! 😲

 

 

[Scarlet Shocker]

Reasons to slot range enhancements #1 maybe?