I24 Blaster Changes and set viability

[Telth]

So had the I24 changes hit blasters, with proper IOs you could get two "instant" snipes while aim was up. Would blaster sets without sniper attacks have fallen out of viability due to the huge dps boost that sets like psi and fire would get?

[Phaetan]

Pffft.  /Devices permasnipe.

(I was already respecced for it on my main.)

[Rejolt]

Curse my already finished, tight build on my elec/nrg/elec blaster for making space for Conserve Power Energize and just enough spots to make it useful (sigh to frakenslotting and losing some set bonuses)

[Supermax]

with proper IOs you could get two "instant" snipes while aim was up.

From what I remember, all you needed was a fully slotted Tactics and the Kismet +tohit IO, and you'd have permanent instant snipe. But maybe power boost was also needed....don't quite remember. PB was up for every fight though, so in the end it didn't really matter, at least for me.

I spent quite a lot of time on the test server, trying out I24 on my Fire/EM blaster, and no question, blasters were going to become a lot more popular with I24. Blasters were always one of the worst options from a min/max standpoint, but with I24 they were going to become one of the most powerful AT's in the game. Pretty much what they were intended to be....true kings of damage. The amount of damage my Fire/EM could do, both ST and AoE, was just mind boggling. And on top of that, I suddenly had a reliable self heal (powerboosted Energize), so I no longer needed to waste two powers on stimulant/aid self. Sigh...he was going to be a true tankmage.

That said, I definitely think the change would have made non-snipe sets more rare. Sets with snipes would do so much more damage, it wouldn't even be close. So the non-snipe sets would be played pretty much just for flavor and completely ignored by min/maxers.

[Ankhammon]

From what I remember, all you needed was a fully slotted Tactics and the Kismet +tohit IO, and you'd have permanent instant snipe. But maybe power boost was also needed....don't quite remember. PB was up for every fight though, so in the end it didn't really matter, at least for me.

I spent quite a lot of time on the test server, trying out I24 on my Fire/EM blaster, and no question, blasters were going to become a lot more popular with I24. Blasters were always one of the worst options from a min/max standpoint, but with I24 they were going to become one of the most powerful AT's in the game. Pretty much what they were intended to be....true kings of damage. The amount of damage my Fire/EM could do, both ST and AoE, was just mind boggling. And on top of that, I suddenly had a reliable self heal (powerboosted Energize), so I no longer needed to waste two powers on stimulant/aid self. Sigh...he was going to be a true tankmage.

That said, I definitely think the change would have made non-snipe sets more rare. Sets with snipes would do so much more damage, it wouldn't even be close. So the non-snipe sets would be played pretty much just for flavor and completely ignored by min/maxers.

I'm not sure how a blaster would have done it. For a Defender you needed the kismet and Tactics slightly overslotted to get the +22 needed for insta-snipe. Very possible for Defenders, could be done on many corrupters, I dunno on blasters unless the other changes to the set gave them +to-hit.

And the devs were making changes to the non snipe sets to help balance them overall. but for pure dps, the insta-snipers would still be in the better position.

Have to remember that the snipe powers were all on decently large recharges though, so getting them in an attack chain would have taken some doing.
I did do a mids (theorycraft) on a NA/Psi fender that could conceivably do around 210 dps with those changes though without Incarnates.

[Phaetan]

I absolutely did manage it on my Elec/Dev Blaster.  Targeting Drone was, as far as I'm aware, the path to getting permanent instant-snipe numbers.  I'm sure someone has a build that can manage it through other means, though.  We had some frighteningly efficient build designers.

I lost my Mids build in a hard drive death, although I could theoretically untangle my build from Phaetan's Sentinel file if you need to see verification.

[Codewalker]

I'm not sure if it had hit the test server or yet not, but it was planned for the blaster Ranged_Buff_ToHit modifier to be increased from 0.07 to 0.10. That brings it on par with corruptor numbers for Tactics and makes perma-snipe viable (with some creative slotting) for sets that don't have Targeting Drone.

[Darkojin]

Sorry, but I have to ask about this, when you guys say 'instant snipe', do you mean that it fires instantly (as in no wait to fire it) or that it is instantly ready to fire again once used (cooldown faster than cast time)?

[Blondeshell]

Sorry, but I have to ask about this, when you guys say 'instant snipe', do you mean that it fires instantly (as in no wait to fire it) or that it is instantly ready to fire again once used (cooldown faster than cast time)?

Paragon Wiki answers all!

[Arcana]

I'm not sure if it had hit the test server or yet not, but it was planned for the blaster Ranged_Buff_ToHit modifier to be increased from 0.07 to 0.10. That brings it on par with corruptor numbers for Tactics and makes perma-snipe viable (with some creative slotting) for sets that don't have Targeting Drone.

I don't think it hit the test server at shutdown, but I know I was discussing that change (or the possibility of that change) with Arbiter Hawk literally two days before the shutdown announcement.

AH had a number of potential changes he had up his sleeve he intended to roll out as-needed or after initial I24 testing and datamining.  I24 was supposed to be the beginning of Blaster balancing, not the end.


Darkojin: in I24, Blasters were intended to get a new inherent property that if they had a high enough tohit buff running sniper attacks would have no windup - in effect instead of that (interruptible) pause that snipers had before they fired, the sniper shot would fire immediately.  It would fire immediately, but not instantly as the actual firing animation would still play and the post-interrupt root would still take effect.  But basically Blaster sniper shots would speed up from about 4.5s total execution time (including arcanatime lag) to about 1.5 seconds.  That would make them about the highest DPA attacks blasters possessed.

[Arcana]

So had the I24 changes hit blasters, with proper IOs you could get two "instant" snipes while aim was up. Would blaster sets without sniper attacks have fallen out of viability due to the huge dps boost that sets like psi and fire would get?

Unlikely, and I was discussing with Arbiter Hawk possibilities for adjusting for this issue.  He was open to continue tweaking this improvement with additional modifications for sets without snipes if it was demonstrated necessary.

I was more concerned with the fact that the improvement was a net overall better improvement for dominators in many ways, and dominators did not need any more edges on Blasters.  My suggestion for shifting the balance back to blasters was to add an additional buff that would make it so that when snipers were in the insta-buff state blasters (and only blasters) would get a range buff comparable to extending the range of standard (80') attacks out to near sniper range.  The problem with sniper blasts were too-fold: they were slow and interruptible, but also that their range was less effective than it should be because blasters could not generally follow up a sniper shot with any other attack.  It was shoot snipe, then wait for the critters to run up to you and shoot back.  A short-duration range boost would allow blasters to not only fire the snipe, but then follow that up with two or three more "normal" attacks that could hit from that range, before having to engage at closer range.

That made the sniper shot a genuinely effectively alpha-shot weapon.


As an aside, man oh man did I love the feel of my En/En on beta.  Between the insta-snipe, energize, and the change to power thrust (especially the bugged version which was hilarious) it was more fun than the Freem mission.

[Ankhammon]

I'm not sure if it had hit the test server or yet not, but it was planned for the blaster Ranged_Buff_ToHit modifier to be increased from 0.07 to 0.10. That brings it on par with corruptor numbers for Tactics and makes perma-snipe viable (with some creative slotting) for sets that don't have Targeting Drone.

That would explain it.

[Supermax]

+22 needed for insta-snipe.

Oh yeah, that was the magic number. Thanks, that brought it all back. I used to cycle between aim, BU, and PB+tactics, so I had perma snipe that way. I remember I had the snipe frankenslotted somehow with lots of recharge too, so it was up all the time, and did absolutely insane damage. But just as great was the nuke change, in my opinion. All in all, I24 was going to probably be my favorite issue of all time.

[Arcana]

Oh yeah, that was the magic number. Thanks, that brought it all back. I used to cycle between aim, BU, and PB+tactics, so I had perma snipe that way. I remember I had the snipe frankenslotted somehow with lots of recharge too, so it was up all the time, and did absolutely insane damage. But just as great was the nuke change, in my opinion. All in all, I24 was going to probably be my favorite issue of all time.

There were a couple of threads where I discussed Blaster issues prior to I23 (I was kind of harping on Blaster problems since the dominator buffs, although most don't remember I started my posting career about blaster problems before posting about scrappers), and one of them mentioned that nukes were broken even by the devs own balancing rules.  They did too little damage for their recharge and endurance costs, when as nukes they should have done more than a conventional attack would do, not less.  Some of those calculations, I'm happy to say, impressed AH enough for him to revisit nukes, although I believe he himself had his own feelings about wanting to change those anyway.

AH's view on blasters was approximately that no blaster attack should have only marginal usage.  If blasters had it, they should be able to spam the heck out of it (within recharge limits).  The notion that Blasters should be hyperactive blast-monkeys was one area he and I agreed on.  I was kind of hoping I could eventually convince him to expend the energy necessary to get our tier 1/2 powers' animations sped up and recharge slightly reduced, so we could cycle those at a higher rate.  That would make it easier for blasters to make complete attack chains without resorting to powers suboptimal for damage dealing.

[Kurrent]

I was kind of hoping I could eventually convince him to expend the energy necessary to get our tier 1/2 powers' animations sped up and recharge slightly reduced, so we could cycle those at a higher rate.  That would make it easier for blasters to make complete attack chains without resorting to powers suboptimal for damage dealing.

I was always one of the worst when it came to number-crunching and using MIDS and stats to optimize builds.  I always operated on feel and clinical effectiveness, and there were certainly some powers in blaster sets that just didn't add anything useful for raw DPS.  Even those could be useful, though, although only in very limited circumstances and not always in the most obvious ways.  I was a huge fan of Time Bomb, and everyone thought I was nuts for it.  However, they were generally looking at the damage it itself dealt, while I was looking at the +50% damage buff it gave everything else for 15 seconds (and Assault Rifle could squeeze a LOT of attacks into those 15 seconds of +50% damage).

Obviously, the primary blaster set I had the most experience with was Electrical, and while it wasn't the most intuitive to learn, it felt fairly fast with its tier 1 and 2 attacks.  Its 3 and 4, though, were another story, with pretty long recharges for both, and so that was one of the trickier challenges to overcome in terms of building an attack cycle.  I built a way around by not concentrating entirely on DPS but instead focusing on endurance drain as well as hold/mez.  That worked for me, but it also required moving away from the set's theoretical goal of DPS.  Tweaking the recharge rates would certainly have made it easier for newer players especially, but also for players who truly wanted to focus on just DPS.  Don't get me wrong, I learned to get plenty of DPS out of electrical/energy, but that was with years of experience and a willingness to take chances and throw some melee attacks in as well with Total Focus.  Judgement was a big help too, in my opinion. 

[Gatecrasher]

I think I just had the Kismet piece on my Elec/Elect, which had me so that I was in the "good snipe zone" whenever I used Aim, Build Up, or any yellow bigger than the small ones, and that was enough for me tocuse it without monkeying with Gen's build too much.

Between that and the nuke change, I was sooooo set for i24 to open the throttles on my Blasters.  (sigh)

[rebel 1812]

isn't the current deal being discussed for I23 and no changes to code?

[HEATSTROKE]

isn't the current deal being discussed for I23 and no changes to code?

yup.// its possible we might never see those changes live..

[blacksly]

isn't the current deal being discussed for I23 and no changes to code?

However, we would not actually need the source code in order to make these changes, I think. I don't recall if the mechanism for checking your own to-hit buff existed before I24, but if it did, then all that would be needed would be to change the power information in the powers database, which can probably be done without recompiling the code.

[Codewalker]

Light-up ring around the snipe can't work without code changes. I23 did not send the current value of the ToHit attribute to the client; I24 does.