Yogi_Bare

Originally Posted by StratoNexus

To be honest, I do not think the median was the primary point that Arcanaville was making. Rather, the fact is blasters do not get the best +damage buffs. That was the primary point. Blasters do not get Rage. They do not get AAO. Until recently they did not get Soul Drain. They don't get Accelerate Matabolism or Fulcrum Shift (not even just a personal version).

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

Requiring targets in melee range is technically a limitation of AAO, but not a practical one for a power given to melee archetypes. Meanwhile its average strength is far higher than Build Ups because it doesn't cost activation time. Build Up costs 1.32s of zero damage for every +100% damage buff for 10s it grants. That cast time cost is often overlooked when computing BU's true damage over time benefit. For SO slotting, the simplified calculation not counting cast time for BU slotted down to 45s recharge is +22.2% damage buff, or about 11% net damage increase over time assuming approximately +100% damage slotting. But factoring in the cast time, BU's benefit drops to only 8% net damage increase or about +16% damage strength. AAO beats that with one target in range.

The theoretical maximum performance of Build Up, at the recharge cap of 500% recharge, is 1.32 idle, 10s of +100%, 8s of no buff. At approximately +100% damage slotting, that is +38% damage strength, or 19% more net total damage. If you can average four or more targets within AAO, you will beat the best that BU can do under the numerically best possible conditions.

In PvE Fiery Embrace has the same uptime as Build Up and Aim: its up 20s with 180 recharge, which is identical uptime to Build Up's 10s of buff with 90s recharge. It also has lower cast time and far lower per cycle time. Slot BU with SOs and you spend about 2.8% of its total cast time rooted and unable to attack. FE slotted similarly spends only 1% of its total cycle time similarly rooted. The net result is that slotted with SOs, even though FE delivers a slightly lower buff (45% additional base damage vs BU's +100% damage strength, roughly 50% additional damage overall) it delivers more overall benefit: 8.9% vs BU's 8%. For all higher recharge regimes, FE gets increasingly better than BU.

Power Siphon also beats BU, and many prior analyses of FU which are a bit more complex due it its effect on attack chains have concluded that FU is at worst equal to BU, and almost certainly better.


I also get the feeling you think Blasters have a higher damage buff modifier than Scrappers. If so, that's false. Both have a 0.125 melee damage buff modifier. BU buffs both by +100% damage. Oh, but BU buffs Blaster tohit by 15% and Scrappers by 20%. That's because Scrappers have a tohit self buff modifier of 0.1 and Blasters have a tohit self buf modifier of 0.075. BU is always better for Scrappers than Blasters, albeit primarily in its accuracy improvement. Its equal in the damage area.

Comparing Blaster secondaries to Scrapper primaries, every Blaster secondary has Build Up except for Devices (which has no comparable power) and Dark (which has Soul Drain). Every Scrapper primary also has Build Up (same damage buff, higher tohit buff) except Claws (Follow Up), Dual Blades (similar to FU), Dark Melee (Soul Drain), Kinetic Melee (Power Siphon), Staff (which has forms), Street Justice (whose BU analog buffs less damage but improves combos), and Titan Weapons (same).

So if we consider BU to be the baseline, two Blaster secondaries are exceptional: Devices which is lower and Dark which is higher. If we assume Follow Up is no better than BU (and most analyses including mine over the years have said its likely better) then the exceptional Scrapper primaries become Dark and Kin which are both provably higher (than BU), and Staff, SJ, and TW.

If we say Staff's self damage buff is lower, the question is where do SJ and TW fall. Given their self damage powers are intimately tied with combos, this is probably a non-trivial issue to convert into an apples to apples comparison, but its highly unlikely the net contribution of Combat Readiness and Build Momentum is to be significantly lower than BU. Particularly because they have about 2/3rds of the damage buff of BU besides their combo effects.

Conservatively - very conservatively - this is a draw. In reality, FU is stronger than I'm giving credit for and SJ and TW are almost certainly better than I'm giving credit for, or just plain incomparable. Worst case scenario is a tie. Its almost certainly a win for Scrappers.

That leaves the other side of the equation: Blaster primaries vs Scrapper secondaries. Here, Blasters do have more actual powers, but that power is Aim: Aim's damage buff is not very high in terms of net overall buff over time. Remember that BU was only increasing damage by 8% under SO conditions and its maximum possible benefit was only 19% (i.e. about +38% damage buff). Aim's going to be lower than that. And its competition is going to be Fiery Embrace and Against All Odds, both of which are stronger than Build Up, much less Aim. In fact, if you're thinking that a straight simple average across the board is the correct way to compare, then saturated AAO alone is going to come close to beating Aim across the board. Lets assume FE grants about 8.8% net damage, or about 17.6% damage strength equivalent, and AAO is saturated at +81.25%. That means averaged across nine scrapper secondaries that is about +11% damage buff.

Aim's average buff slotted with SOs is about +7.8% damage buff. If every blaster primary had Aim, the average would be 7.8%. But AR and Dual Pistols don't. So unless you believe AR and Dual Pistols have something that is an equivalent to Aim but twice as strong, Scrappers are actually going to win this one also.

Perhaps you think its unfair to presume AAO is saturated. So lets work backwards. The Blaster average with no Aim in AR and DP is actually +6.5% on average due to Aim. How many targets does AAO need to average for the Scrapper average to tie that value? Its when AAO is generating about +49.7% buff, which occurs at 5.4 targets.

When Shield averages 5.4 targets in AAO, it and FE alone can combine to provide a greater average benefit to nine scrapper secondaries than Aim can when ten out of twelve blaster primaries have it.

So even though all I said was that Scrappers get the strongest and the most variety of damage self buffs, if you want to average the self buff amounts for both Blasters and Scrappers, something I would not necessarily consider a valid comparison, Blasters still lose.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

These are the damage self buffs available to Blasters:

Build Up (and its clones)
Aim (and its clones)
Soul Drain


And for Scrappers:

Build Up (and its clones)
Follow Up (and its clones)
Soul Drain
Power Siphon
Fiery Embrace
Against All Odds

That doesn't count things like Form of the Body, and if you throw Brutes in there you also have Rage. So Blasters get Aim which Scrappers don't get. Scrappers get Follow Up, Power Siphon, Fiery Embrace, and Against All Odds which Blasters don't get. I'd say Scrappers get a much more diverse, much more interesting, and numerically much stronger set of damage self buff powers.

Originally Posted by Fulmens

Yogi :
Blaster melee damage multiplier is 1.0 . Blaster range multiplier and scrapper "melee" multiplier (as Arcanaville points out, which is used for all their range attacks) is 1.125 . Not "twice". While Blaster melee attacks may tend to be harder-hitting, that's a higher damage scale on the individual attack. (damage scale * damage multiplier * a level-based number = total damage.)

Originally Posted by Fulmens

I did a quick look at a most/many blaster* vs a BS/most in City of Data, in single target damage, and the blaster looked like about 10-20% more DPS over the first few seconds of the fight because it has fast, heavy hitters in both the primary and the secondary.

I'm a little surprised by the claim that Scrappers have stronger self damage buffs: care to elaborate?

* typical tier-3 having primary, /elec or /en or /ice secondary.

Originally Posted by Kirsten

That would be perfect for Stalkers.

Originally Posted by Aett_Thorn

First two I like...third one I'm not such a fan of. I could see that being VERY annoying since very little in the game has any sort of protection against repel, and you'd have the same sorts of complaints about KB with no way to negate it if you want.

Originally Posted by Fulmens

If I said that a Scrapper can do, plucking an undefended number from the air, 80% of the damage of a Blaster, would that encroach?
Given that the Blaster is 1/6 as survivable or less*?

* Well, unless you have that one Defender around that is always available for team, pays close attention to the Blasters, and never screws up. I think I met her once.

Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight

It would be mez again.

Pre-level 20 damage modifiers are smoothed out. Most of the ATs do comparatively the same amounts of damage. That additional damage and lower scale mob hit points may be what put the blaster in the sweet spot.

Now add more HP to the mobs in the post 20 game, add in that the blaster is mezzed more often and can't sustain that defiance buff with 3 powers, and increasing the difficulty setting that a blaster is comfortable on makes that worse rather than better. (A dead blaster has a 0 defiance buff)

Spread that out over the time spent playing and the benefit nearly vanishes.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU

They didn't need to be changed, because the mirrored each other from the start. As did corruptors and defenders.

Stalkers where changed to more closely mirror Scrappers though.


IMO Blasters have always mirrored Dominators, with higher damage backed up by weaker control-as-mitigation. It's just that Blaster control secondaries are so weak some people didn't notice them.

Originally Posted by St_Angelius

Well, you could say Doms are part blaster - part controller. Which is basicly how I view them.

Personally I see Corrs as the closest kin to a blaster, as they are part blaster part fender, and fenders themselves are part blaster.

Originally Posted by St_Angelius

Sorry to speak for you PRAF, but he gets that from the fact that Doms CAN and DO have both Good Melee and Good Ranges attack chains, so if they were designed not to but have, then they are broken!

Originally Posted by St_Angelius

So, basicly, you are saying that to judge the perfomance of a DPS toon, we shouldn't judge it by comparing it to the other DPS classes, but only to the support classes? Somehow that doesn't sound right to me.

Originally Posted by Yogi_Bare

I could've sworn I've seen arguments against melee attacks in this thread for various reasons including 'poor damage'.

But that aside, the ranged attack chain takes precedence and outnumbers melee representation (by at least 3 to 1) for Blasters.

What I'm suggesting acknowledges that and allows the chain to surpass melee involvement if the player so chooses; taking full command of close ranged and melee ranged damage if they choose otherwise (all without having to rely on their melee abilities).

It goes beyond your 'strictly' damage interpretation on the suggesting with the addition of the 'chance to' effects (mitigation without sacrifice of playstyle).

It also allows for supplanting the Secondary Set's melee powers for other abilities (if that's what making Blasters have more parity comes down to.

Finally, it's generically thematic for a class that specializes in ranged damage.

Originally Posted by Kyriani

Don't blasters already have this capability to some extent? And by that I mean... blaster melee attacks/PBAOES far outstrip their ranged attacks in damage. They can already do what you're saying and I think that was originally their intent. It just doesn't work out as well as you might think and the current state of blasters is the prime example.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

I am referring to the sets in general, but as to those specific powersets I would say Dark Blast is a mitigation set in the same sense Dark Melee is a control set.

Of Dark Blast, Dark Manipulation, and Mental Manipulation, which is explicitly designed to provide survival? At best, I think you could say that Mental Manipulation was designed to do so. If any scrapper, tanker, brute, controller, dominator, defender, or stalker got their damage mitigation reset to what is included within Dark Manipulation they would scream bloody murder.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

And every archetype without exception has at least one powerset that is EXPLICITLY designed to kill, and one powerset EXPLICITLY designed to keep the player alive. *Except* Blasters.

Originally Posted by VoodooGirl

How could we justify an Arachnos "Destined One" just waltzing into Paragon City with being ganged up on incessantly by Longbow and PPD and thrown - for some toons back - into the Zig?