Its time to turn Bitter Freeze Ray into a snipe

[Frozen Burn]

7 hours ago, macskull said:

Wait, are you seriously saying BFR isn’t that bad because its cast time is shorter than some nukes? Surely you understand why that is a completely useless comparison?

 

I am saying it in comparison as a power with cast time being used in combat.  And as I also stated, the pay off isn't there compared to a nuke, so no comparison there.  But when talking about clicking a button and a power activating, BFR is shorter than a lot of nukes.  That's all.  

[Frozen Burn]

On 1/30/2025 at 11:52 AM, Bluff said:

 

- Freeze Ray's damage is scaled by the 10s recharge time. This puts it in the same bucket as Blaze, TK Blast, Power Burst, Shout, Tesla Cage.

- Bitter Ice Blast has a 12s recharge time, the same as all the other snipes.

It makes sense to compare these powers based on recharge time and endurance cost because that's how the damage/effectiveness is scaled.

I don't mean Freeze Ray is the literal 3rd tier power, but usually you call an attack "t3" when it's the attack between the t1/t2 attacks and the snipe in damage. Semantics aside, you can just compare by recharge time.

 

I get your reasoning, but that buff to Freeze Ray (and other ST mez powers in non-snipe sets: Suppressive Fire, Screech, Tesla Cage, etc) was made by the HC team well after the set was created by the original devs - and it was to help balance the set because they have no snipe and was missing that extra in combat damage (Tesla Cage, in the case that while Ellectricity does have a snipe, it doesn't have a heavy ST attack like other sets).  So, you cannot look at it from purely a damage/rech time/end cost standpoint when comparing powers' "roles" or reasoning for being in the set entirely. 

 

But still, for Ice Blast, you have FR as the ST hold, Bitter Ice Blast as your heavy hitting ST attack, and Bitter Freeze Ray with even higher damage still (essentially in place of the snipe power).  But the ungodly animation time makes BFR less useful like a fast snipe in combat, so there is a loss of damage output, hence the buff to FR.  If the OP gets their wish and BFR gets a fast snipe option, then FR would have to go back to normal low damage hold - and I'm not a fan of that.