This is in reference to the sticky powers chart at the top of the page.
I always hated blasters in COH for having NO defenses. I refused to play them.
Blasters in comics had defenses...just not in COH.
Iceman had Ice armor. The Human Torch had a heat shield,
Devs, THANK YOU for allowing Blasters to have defenses. I am playing a Gunner, and now I need to come up with a cool concept.
and if I didn't mention it...YOU DEVS ARE THE BEST! Someday, somehow, I am going to bring you my wife's cookies...she makes them from scratch and they are the best!
—
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Gunmen could always use shields as defense
And I agree, these Dev's are the best!! ^-^
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Space Ghost has 3 different shields, and although he has super strength, he usually fights as a blaster, with his 3 different blasts.
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Take your time with the concept, Cyclops. The Gunner will happen, but sadly not at launch. It is one of the Specifications I really want to play too.
We will be able to choose from:
-Director: Control/ Support
-Partisan: Ranged/ Support
-Sentinel: Support/ Ranged
-Gladiator: Melee Damage/ Defense
-Bulwark: Defense/ Melee Damage
The rest of them is planned to follow later.
Curses! Foiled again!
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I'm curious why they want to go Ranged/Support or Support/Ranged over Ranged/Defense which would likely be more popular.
Hopefully the melee sets have some sort of attack (or two) in them as well as the epic pool equivalent.
Yeah, wondering that, too. My character is definitely ranged but not really support... maybe limited control is a better way to put it?
Maybe they think that ranged/defense will quickly evolve into tankmages?
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
My guess ... Start off with the five original coh classes or close to
Controller
Corrupter/Blaster
Defender
Scrapper
Tanker
I guess that 'Support' has all sorts of buffs, heals and debuffs in various combination. You could take a set that focuses on debuff to slow enemies and lower their resistance to damage.
I would assume so. I liked Corrupters more then Blasters in CoH anyway.
There is a lot of specifications still coming though and that's not even getting into the Operator (Mastermind) which is also coming out later on.
Formerly known as Bleddyn
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We have a very basic, tried and true lineup at launch and I guess that is for the best. But despite that, I am most interestet in playing some of the later Specifications. Especially Bodyguard, Gunner and Centurion. I guess it is something to stay exitet about.
I thought the Gladiator was the Brute. I guess its the scrapper now. Wah. I liked my brute.
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The problem I see is with such limited classes at start is there's just going to have to be a big difference between Range/Support and Support/Range. And those who want range and just damage, might feel a bit "meh" about something akin to the Corruptor.
Well the Gladiator can be like the scrapper or the brute, depending on the masteries you give them, Cyclops. There will be ones that will make them stronger the longer the combat goes, that should be what you are looking for.
And Brand X, that is, the way I understand it, also what makes the Range/ Support set more damage oriented than the Support/ Range specification. The first will get masteries that help do a lot of damage, the latter will get masteries that help support your teammates. So hopefully there will be a big difference.
Like Lutan said, when you factor in the Mastery's ability to sculpt playstyle, we should get more than one "AT'" out of each of these specifications. It'll be a decent amount of variety for a launch.
And I'm sure they want us to break stuff and to play with balancing live a bit before they roll out the more complex, less clear-cut Specifications.
But... I'm looking forward to the Bastion. One of my concepts in CoH never really worked till Ancillaries came out. And even then the Ancillary Pool color didn't match.
I was sooooooooooo waiting for Power Pool Customization. It would have been the last piece of the puzzle for my main :(.
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Sometimes it's not about what will be popular, but what will be the biggest challenge to balance. The CoH archetypes have precedence, and first approximating them is a good way to get our feet wet. We have to approach our development with the awareness that we are often learning as we go, and try, whenever we can, to order our challenges accordingly.
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Thanks, But I won't play a squishy baster until I get a bit of defense.
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Hmmm, what about the tertiary power pools? I do not know when they get available, but there might be something in there that gives you at least decent defense. If you pick a support set with powers that can also heal yourself and combine it with a defensive tertiary, you may very well get a very sturdy character in the end.
I'd say it's less defense you're talking about, but Mez Protection, since the blaster in CoT look to be CoH equivalent of Corruptors and Defenders.
There are a many of reasons for why the choices were made they way that they were. All of which boil down to the process of implementation. There is quite simply too much involved in discussiong all the nitty-gritty-details of design.
Regardless, no classification is absolutely at a full loss of have zero capability of obtaining some form of sustainability. At the very least, every classification can choose powers from Tertiary Sets which are mostly sets designed from all the various primary sets - including our protection sets.
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It also has a lot to do with the tactics your particular alt is based on. I played several Blasters in CoH and obviously the melee based ones could use all the DEF they could get. But one of my favorite alts was a strictly ranged/snipe based Blaster who Hovered about 98% of the time. She was so rarely hit by anything (especially while teaming) that I didn't have to waste buffing her DEF at all. She was the very definition of a "glass cannon" that could probably have gotten away with wearing the proverbial "chainmail bikini" and not been any worse for wear. ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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I did the Hover Blaster and found defense was still invaluable. It did however help versus mez protection. Also, when you have team mates able to take aggro that always helped, but just hover and go did not work well in my experience.
Also, not all blaster concepts have hover in the mix.
Playing a blaster really made me hate the game.
that experience is the main reason why I've begged the devs
"let us one shot the cannon fodder"
Sadly soloing a blaster means pulling all the time,
and you know how I feel about that.
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I could solo certain Blaster builds even prior to IOs without resorting to pulling. Was is more dangerous than many other AT combos, certainly. I still found it fun. And there were certain blaster builds leveraging IOs that could pull off crazy stunts like taking on full team spawns, soloing certain AVs and even GMs. I won't argue that there was a steep learning curve and investment involved in making this possible but it was possible. Not every play style is suited for all players and that's ok in my book so,long as there are play styles that suit most players.
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Heh, I had a 'Blaster with Defense' in CoH. She was a FF/Energy Defender. Teamed with her twin sister, she was hellacious fun. Twice the shields and twice the Freem!
Be Well!
Fireheart
This was my experience also. My main was a blaster and the character I logged the most hours with -- from my first moment in Paragon City to the last. She was fire/energy, so she never had even a hint of defence (until Incarnate Powers), relying instead on high damage and various stun/KB effects from her secondary (especially when soloing EBs or even the occasional AV). She was a perfect example of "the best defence is a strong offence." Personally, I'm sad that there won't be a ranged/manipulation type to play at launch, but I have high hopes that MWM will soon get round to this so we can have the closest thing to CoH Blasters as possible.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Yep, Why need defense when you can do so much damage :D
I personally really liked how the blasters were setup(atk/def) in CoH. I also liked how they were just different enough from corruptors that it made both a lot of fun to play. If blasters(Rangers) were going to have better defense in CoT, I think besides shields a good defense for them would be acrobatics/better evasiveness.
To me when I thought of blasters in CoH I thought of very agile nimble people, just look at the way the gun barrage(I think that's what it was) animation was in CoH, you could barely keep track of their arms they were moving so fast. Now, I am sure that some people are going to make bulky blasters. For those who's characters are not athletic or agile, it could be a form of tough skin or various forms of armor that actually grant defense bonuses
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Obviously not all Blaster builds used Hover and obviously ANY character (regardless of build) could do better overall if they had more DEF and/or mez protection. I'm simply stating the fact that I managed to play what amounted to a "defenseless hovering sniping glass cannon" blaster for hundreds of enjoyable hours without having to pump up her DEF in any serious way.
Sure she'd still get wiped every once in a while and focusing on sniping made her relatively slow especially while soloing so she probably wouldn't be considered the "perfect FotM build" for multiple reasons. Again I was just making the counterpoint to what Cyclops was implying that depending on your tactics it was very possible to have a viable Blaster that didn't require any extra DEF.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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I loved playing my blapper (Ms Majestic)...absolutely no defence and messin up badguys up front with the tanks and scrappers. hehe
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IMHO Ranged/Support will work perfectly fine if the engine supports self-applied buffs, unlike CoX which had to have "other" and "self" versions of the various targeted buffs. If you can self-buff, and you want defense, then you need to get a defense-based secondary. Problem solved.
And as Tannim pointed out, it's not the One Way. You can also pull in a tertiary set if that works better for you. Or temporary powers or whatever.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I will state that I am generally against self heals in combat unless you're a healer class.
Secondary sets could provide defense buffs, offense buffs, hell even light versions of crowd control.. but please be wary of self heals.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
But...Healing Factor! Also, I like a clickie self heal. As someone who LOVED Stalker Willpower in CoH I'll tell you it didn't actually make WP any stronger, it just made the character a bit more clickie outside of the attacks.
Infact, Stalker WP was surpassed by Scrapper WP after 3 (or was it 4) targets in range for it's regeneration to ramp up. The clickie heal did not help one survive that much more in the game.
Hey, i'm all for self heals in the primary slot. I'm speaking about people who don't choose Tank or Buffer role (DPS and Debuffers) who think they should be able to also HealTank.
I have less of an issue with them taking added defense (mitigating damage) but self healing (basically leaving a fight to come back with full life and go back to DPSing) causes me much concern. If you run from a fight, fine, but the recovery rate for you to get that health back should be based on resting rate and/or if you have a healer to aid you. Otherwise it kills off the entire healing function and the hurts the Buffer class that has most use of it.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
+1
We don't have a healer class at all. The closest thing to that would be support power sets that have a heal in them. Support users are not healers even if their power set is heavily suited for supporting allies and less than debuffing.
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While i knew this, i fell into colloquial use. Post edited and thank you for clarification.
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I still believe that use of the Alt Toggle for Buffs that can be cast on others to as to redirect the casting onto yourself is the way to go with the UI. World of Warcraft does it, and it's dirt simple to do. That way you don't need to have separate Heal Other and Heal Self Powers. Instead, you just have a Heal Power that by default goes to your $Target, but in the absence of a $Target (or if holding down the Alt key) gets cast on yourself instead. That way you don't have to "un-Target" in order to buff yourself.
Realized that "healing" is just HP Buffing and you're all set.
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That sounds like "Let's not give Scrappers Reconstruction" not for that at all. Hell, most regenners in comics fit the scrapper and not tanker roll.
Is that like for Kinetics... Speed Boost AoE also gives yourself a buff? So no need for Siphon Speed?
I'm wondering how this will work when facing an AV (or the like) and the Alpha Strike hits!
How should that play out? How will CoT players handle that? Just wondering. :)
There will be a few direct heals in support sets or armors will heals for recovery, not to mention some other nifty protection mechanics yet to be revealed. Then of course you have reserves should any be avialable and temp powers. I think there will be plentynof options and strategies.
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Paladin is a character I created in 1982.
He has always been a super strong martial artist with regeneration.
Thats what he'll always be.
I don't care what class he is
I don't even care if there are classes
I'll take whatever class allows me to take the abilities I want
and I'd just focus on the abilities if there were no classes
In my pen and paper game I found classes indispensable because the class you pick gives you a bonus to a lot of related abilities, including non combat abilities. Without classes, Every character would have to take a ton of skills that fit his theme to get the same effect. Using classes keeps the character sheets and character creation a lot simpler.
In a game like this I seriously don't understand why we even have classes at all.
If I could just pick a primary secondary and tertiary power set I'd have my character.
Not arguing against classes
like I said I really don't care
But if someone tells me I shouldn't be able to do what I'm doing with my character because I'm the wrong class
I'm just going to look at them and laugh.
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Siphon Speed was a Drain attack. You needed to drain someone (or something) else in order to boost yourself. That made it a Target Required type of Power. That sort of configuration prevents a "buff self in absence of target" formulation.
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I can't read this without remembering the good times back when you played a rock tank and had a kin on the team, brought a tear to my eye :p Until that one time you get a kin without sb.......
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I can't speak for the development team, but judging by our grid of classifications and specifications, what you're talking about it effectively the "endgame" as far as classes are concerned. What I mean is that the ideal scenario is filling in every cell in that table (with the possible exception of Manipulation/Assault as a classification, and stuff like Defense/Support, but who knows?).
That could bring the game into a class system sort of like Archeage's, wherein you pick your first, second, and third skill trees, and that determines your class. So in CoT character creation could potentially be something like:
"What Classification do you want? Melee Damage, Ranged Damage, Defense, ..."
Ranged Damage
"What Specification do you want? Manipulation, Support, or Defense?" (based on valid pairings)
Defense
"Okay, you're a Gunner."
Like I said, I'm not a developer and can't speak for them, but this is the sort of thing I imagined when I saw the Classification/Specification grid.
I have to agree with a few others on this thread, Gunner is what I've been wanting since I first played CoH.
I'm imaging a superhero that generates vast amounts of kinetic energy from his very cells, this bind those cells together, and deflect incoming forces. The character can project these kenetic forces from his feet (flying) and hands (kinetic blasts with knock-back).
Another character may envisage an Iron-Man type concept, of power armor with jet pack and energy projectors or guns.
There we have it, Ranged / Defence.
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Bingo! Me too! The comics are full of blasters with defenses: Force fields, armor, tough skin.
I'm just sad i will have to wait 6 months or more for a blaster who isn't squishy
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This pleases me. Options and strategies. One of the things that CoX did well was giving players TONS of different ways to do things. After the first few years things became balanced enough that there were many options to do just about anything. 'We're fighting Boss X. We have 3 Controllers, a Blaster, a Scrapper and 2 Masterminds. Ok...let's go!'
You didn't need the perfect mix of anything to accomplish stuff. To me this was the best part of the game. It encouraged altitis (I've Tanked with 11 different combos, many of them not Tanks) and creativity.
You keep doing this and the players will come.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
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This looks like a job for SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSE!!!!!!!
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\me reads power description
\me Steeples forehooves
\me Moose Chuckles
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This looks like a job for SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSE!!!!!!!
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I believe that is what we call [b][i]AN EVIL IDEA™[/i][/b].
More please.
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The kinetic blasts are bright baby pink, and when used on people, makes them soil their trousers.
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Blasters with pink Pom poms used to make all classes shake in COH plus if you hit your accolades it made you a tank blaster
Am I the only one who simply equates Gunner with the old Soldier VEAT? The only difference will be that the gunner won't have a massive team-boosting set of auras.
My main VEAT used to run a solid 50% defense solo, about half of which was doubled Maneuvers auras for the team.
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The Crab Soldier VEAT was very much a "Baster with Defence" plus a tonne of Team Buffs and was my favourite. End Cost was always an issue until the Incarnate system came out. Plus the lack of good Ranged AoE IO Sets.
Despite that the Gunner will obviously allow different Pri/Sec combinations not just the single that the Crab had, as well as no backpack (although I loved the crab backpack and would have loved there to be more options for different styles).
I ran on a team of 8 Crabs once and OMG it was awesome. 8x Maneuvers + 8x TT: Maneuvers + 8x Assault + 8x TT: Assault + 8x TT: Leadership. All that with so many AoE's was OVERKILL of a massive proportion. Ahhh fun times... :)
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Agreed on the backpack. Would love to have one again. The only complaint I had against the backpack was that the legs didn't reposition themselves while Ninja Run was in use, turning them into a "roll cage" in front of your head that pointed the emitters at the ground, rather than rotating them back at the "hip" so as to point forward while your torso pitched forward in Ninja Run posing.
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