CaptainPants

[ QUOTE ]
Captainpants, I have respectfully stayed away from the nature of your posts because I was really hopeing that you would eventually "get it" so to speak. Obviously, several points are flying over your head.

You seem to indicate that the best thing that a blaster can add to a team is damage.

[/ QUOTE ]

because it is the least filled role in many teams, there are quite a few teams have 1 scrapper or 1 blaster, and just rely on buffs/debuffs to keep the damage high.

[ QUOTE ]
You also indicate in your post that targeting Drone allows an AoE blaster to deliver better AoE damage over time.

I will point out a couple of things to you that should, if you understand what I am saying, shatter this conception.

The secondary sets with Build-up, also have melee powers. I will talk about them after I have talked about Build-up. With Build-up, you can run through your AoE attack chain and hit mobs with so much force that depending on what set you are, you can kill almost all the minions (not everything may get hit).

[/ QUOTE ]

people were comparing access to melee to the access to trip mines, and fire/ does that without aim or build up, and if the clump is tight enough, caltrops can replace things like snowstorm, rarely. rains are strong, and ... relatively.. safe if a troller isnt using immobilize/sleep.

[ QUOTE ]
Now, you may be able to point to a DPS chart and say that overtime the /Dev is actually doing more damage, it doesn't matter though in the game. I can point to the game and say that the blaster useing Build-up is killing more mobs. That is what is important.

[/ QUOTE ]

a /dev can kill faster too if he plays right, and like i said, the idle times and the animations bork numbers beyond reliability.

[ QUOTE ]
Now, after the Blaster has delivered his AoE payload, there are still likely to be LTs, and Bosses standing. What does the /Dev user have in his arsenal? Trip Mine, too bad that takes forever to use. Taser, well that will stun one while you wait for powers to recharge. AT, lets not even joke at this point. Caltrops, well we could cause more scatter I guess.

[/ QUOTE ]
..... get a troller? or a granite, or a dark/ defender, im sure theres a few other ways, you encounter bosses regularly in 7-8 man teams, who regularly have tankers and trollers, caltrops is great damage mitigation through fear, but your assuming that you must personally deal with every mob in every spawn.

[ QUOTE ]
Oh, but he still has single target ranged attacks while his AoE is rechargeing. Good point, too bad only 1 or 2 of them will likely bring down a target that survived his AoE barrage since he doesn't do the damage of the Build-up Blaster.

[/ QUOTE ]
and this is assuming your the only AoE damage in the party.

[ QUOTE ]
Then, looking at the Blaster with Build-up, you will also notice that even if he didn't have that great added damage from Build-up, he can fill his single target attack chain (while AoE rechargeing) with high damage melee attacks that are faster and do more damage than his ranged attacks.

[/ QUOTE ]
I really could care less whether the single target comes from range or melee, but many pick single target exclusively because they can chain it.

[ QUOTE ]
Thus, killing more mobs faster. Which is what you say makes a good blaster. Which means, that /Dev is at the back of the pack when it comes to makeing a good blaster for teams and solo.

[/ QUOTE ]
I agree on the solo part, setting up is very slow, but in a party with too many controllers you could more than likely lay down the friggin time bomb mid-fight.

[ QUOTE ]
In regards to teaming, perhaps you haven't played blasters much, but we got an increased damage cap. Which means we can actually use a Fulcrum Shift AND a Build-up to hit our cap. Not to mention that to get that Fulcrum Shift boost, you would have to be next to the mobs, now the Build-up Blasters have Melee to use while they are there, what has /Dev got? Oh, cloaking device so they can hide, good job, that helps the team. *roll eyes*

[/ QUOTE ]

double FS pbaoe = 80% for trollers, triple siphon power = something like 60-75%, +140-155%, that can be kept nearly perma. and if you did sit in melee, which many have no problem with (least on my teams) a single kin can perma stack FS, which can cap a blaster in large groups.

[ QUOTE ]
No offense, but your examples all seem to come from your observations of poorly built blasters and poorly played blasters. I have a solo Blaster built for PvP. I have all of my AoEs AND my single target blasts (except flares) not to mention most of my heavy hitting melee attacks from my secondary. Exactly what am I missing that a team blaster would have? Recall Friend, aid other, stimulant, I mean what is it you think a Solo blaster will not have that a team blaster would?

[/ QUOTE ]

many either skip their AoE or slot them lightly

[ QUOTE ]
You assume that a solo blaster would not take their AoEs, which is a mistake. A solo blaster will get their AoE that helps them kill faster, if it doesn't help them kill faster then they are likely to skip it. As far as endurance issues go, all blasters that attack fast, have endurance issues. I have /Dev blasters and /anything other than fire blasters. They all use up endurance at a frightening rate because I attack constantly with no pause. If a blaster has endurance left at the end of fight, they are either useing conserve power, Powersink, popped some blues, or let the rest of the team do the killing while they conserved their endurance.

[/ QUOTE ]

at higher levels there are a few fairly popular defender powersets that deal with this, lower levels there are probably only 2 powers available.

Im not saying that they shouldnt fix device powers like trip mines in hit detection, im saying this set isnt suffering as horribly as half of the people here make it out, bubblers are the top-dog, but its not like they cry for fixes that often (they gimped my MM, so they apparantly have once or twice, i want my repulsion bomb back!)

But this thread is like a compilation of people bashing a set to the point the people who CAN use it to full effect will never even TRY.

Its not godly, but the bonus is on-par with BU when your sustaining damage, and for the most part, melee does not add anything new to a blaster.

80% is not a huge boost when your in a large team, EMP can add damage, kin, rad, dark, but theyre all support toons, of course they get more invites, they give bonuses to everyone.

They also cant solo that well if they build to team. my troller could make a party barrel through anything at 20, but he couldnt solo a same level spawn of 1 lt and 3 minions, his endurance ran out before the lt went to 80%. on the other hand, I also add large amounts of -defense and various means of +dmg.

If you think corruptors get so much more from the secondary, just team. the secondary adds more to teams than to their own damage. a blaster and a defender paired up easily compete with 2 corruptors, especially when you consider that most of the time they dont get as much team support from brutes or MMs. domis are too rare to rely on.

what I mean is, you get more from a team than your secondary. when your team is rolling you wont even notice BU, you might have fortitude or any number of things, TD + FS is far better than BU + FS, your already at the cap! dark/ gives -res, but no -defense, accuracy is good here. Rad? gives bonuses to both, it doesnt even matter as long as you dont maliciously hunt their anchors for kicks.

even then, getting your damage capped from FS isnt necessary, the archery blaster i mentioned only got the benefit from the buff around ME, yet still did great damage.

TD gives a different bonus, thats why i said its bad to compare. as for devices not being team-friendly, neither is focusing on blapping, at least not in anything over 4 people.

btw a FS'd scrapper crits for 1400 on +2 wolves with its tier 9(i think it was a boss), but has less options for quickly killing minions, I would try and reference something a little less borked but that was the only time i ever saw a scrapper yell out their damage.

since most PuG blasters build for solo, people shy away from inviting them because theyre more likely to get the job done with a spines/ or an aggressive troller/tanker. When someone thinks about getting a blaster they usually are thinking of fast-paced kills, but scrappers are fairly easy to come across and minions as a whole are the largest initial threat. It takes 1-2 blasters to completely remove that threat very quickly in any size team, as long as they bother to take the 2-3 AoEs they have access to, taking out 2 bosses per spawn takes longer with 2 blappers or 2 scrappers, it doesnt matter, as 50% more single target output doesnt close a 100-200% health difference.

tho spines are more often than not completely insane and the last one i teamed with liked to herd multiple spawns (+2s) while the team was still fighting. checked the kiosk the next morning and he was that days "warrior nemesis" because of it. oddly enough, i was checking it because i half expected that to be the case. oh yea, and the team was handling the spawns he brought, but not really by choice.

If your team brings buffs/debuffs, the "gap" in secondary power is either not very noticable and devices is more often than not just as effective, or BU is so trivial you need to stop getting hung up on it.

Also, the boosts from secondaries do not alter the amount of damage you do to the point your party will suddenly notice that your secondary is "uber"

i say devices does well because I havent seen a single one be any less effective than someone using a different secondary yet i HAVE seen plenty of blasters who focus on an entire single-target attack chain that does less than a single AoE when you look at total damage, true, a fire/ who relies entirely on his AoE will have hell soloing or in groups of 3-4, but he will contribute heavily in large teams, they may not be grateful, but a fast team will not disband after 1 mission.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

I'm saying that your focusing on single target a bit too much, the melee powers are good if your party is

a. missing scrappers

b. fighting AVs every mission, which is confined mostly to 40+

[/ QUOTE ] I guess I just don't understand where you're coming from here. I mean, why are the blaps only good if you're missing scrappers? Using /EM say, a blaster can meet or exceed a Scrapper's damage. That's good even if you DO have scrappers around.

Blapping's not bad solo no. It's also quite nice in teams. Heck, it's great in teams where there's a good controller, like your earth one. There's very little chance of getting hit with the various controll powers around, which means they can go wild with their high damage powers ... blaps. Higher damage means groups of mobs go down faster which means better XP.

Devices on the other hand is not so good for big teams. For one, most big teams I've found are fighting +3s. That means you're probably going to be wanting to slot your powers with an acc SO in the first place for one. For another you're not getting as much extra damage from the secondary. There's a little bit more hitting with your blasts. I guess if you waste 3 slots on SG your group gets hit a little less. You could try to lay some mines down, but they're fairly easily interrupted in my experience. CD keeps you unseen untill you actually attack.

On the other hand, the other sets have build up. With the AoE sets, I've noticed that folks seem to be fond of saying that with BU and Aim their Archery blasters can take out a spawn of +3s in 3 attacks, and do it every time the powers recharge. Which is great, wouldn't be quite as fast without build up ya. And heck, when those powers are down, there's also a not inconsiderable amount of damage you can find with some of the blaps.

[ QUOTE ]
and as you said fire/ and elec/ pull it off with AoE, ice can too if you use the rain and breath, AR does it fairly well, and ive SEEN archery do it consistantly. oh and nobody likes nrg/ apparantly so i actually havent gotten to see that one in action.

[/ QUOTE ] I could have sworn I said that /fire and /elec can both do AoE MELEE damage. The good AoE primaries are AR and Fire. They're good off the bat with AoE. Archery gets a lot better once it hits 32 for AoE. The rest of them don't quite come near the AoE damage of those sets. For the record, that's Electricity, Energy, Ice and Sonic. That's just a bit more than half the primary sets.

[ QUOTE ]
this has been nagging at me, where on earth do you people get the idea trip mines define the powerset?

[/ QUOTE ] It didn't define the powerset. It was part of it though. I mean, you'd throw the SG 'till the mobs were all covered, then run in and lay down a mine while stealthed with CD (or alternately skip the grenade and just take superspeed). Or you could lay down some mines in a caltrops field near the enemies (while stealthed), then put down a turret to aggro the mobs and draw them in to their doom. Then you could repeat the process with the next spawn and port your turret in instead of waiting for it to recharge.

To me the devices powerset was all about the ability to set up traps of one kind or another, a good number of the powers in the set mesh(ed) very well to allow traps to be set with ease. Traps are most easily used solo, and as such in teams all you really saw devices blasters do was use their drone and blast from range, which is what you seem to think the whole set's about. Sadly both the methods for setting traps when solo, and the use of the drone when in teams have been reduced in effectiveness over time.

[/ QUOTE ]

okay, before i reply to this one, someone said corruptors get less aggro, i made a fire/rad that for intensive purposes, is a tank mage. it takes aggro off 2 brutes and is the only one who ever died on its teams short of a full team whipe. think the self heals are great?

I have an entire spawn that would shoot me as soon as i popped my head out, granted it was my fault but my end was empty after a single attack chain so it might as well be one that kills all but the lts.

a team of 1 tanker 1 blaster and 1 defender would have been faster.

on the other note, earth/ has such horribly low damage that it is almost mandatory that I fight on 6-8 man teams, My secondary requires the ability to hit as well, when it comes to being sk'd I take the highest available.

as for blaps being your riskiest and most rewarding attacks, AoE generates more aggro across an entire mob, but unless I'm fighting on an 8 man team 2 control powers can pretty much makes it 100% safe for the blaster. a strong chain knocks it down to bosses and lts even as an opener.

8-man the bosses take a few seconds to lock down since theres 2, so i let the tanker distract them first.

Earth also has quicksand making accuracy slotting low priority, almost worthless up to +5s... especially when you can stack 2-3 of them. And i still go for the sk.

I avoid teams where I'm fighting over +3s, it keeps the team alive and lets me do my job to the point its fun.

Also, someone compared TD to both aim and BU .... and aim isnt in the secondary so its not really related to this. and if someone could give me numbers as to:

the actual recharge reduction effects, is 99% reduction the same as around 50% of normal recharge? its kinda been nagging at me, and would allow me to actually work out the damage increase from an extra recharge.

Oh and the recharge and duration times of BU would be helpful for that too just curious to the actual gap, because if its up for 1/3rd of all the fighting and does 80% dmg increase... well, TD seems to be better from 1 extra recharge slot, and since its a toggle rather than a click it makes me think my numbers are off.

right now a blaster who is shooting constantly would be getting slightly more from TD, though the fact that you will usually have more than 1 power up at a time would probably balance that in favor of BU. and hasten would be better for non /devices as well.

no no, the /devs were archery and AR, the fire/ i couldnt even tell what the secondary was, it was mostly EMP + inferno.

But fire/ is pretty good, most fun corr primary ive tried out so far, lets me use my secondary to its full power and throw out AoE spikes when my end permits. I can see using the melee instead of the single targets, but most blappers i see dont really use AoE, despite throwing the 2 aoe they have is better than going full single-target. :/ okay now im gone, before i run outta time.

Then its odd that the best team blasters ive seen have all been /dev, now isnt it? well, the fire/ was pretty useful, but that was the primary.

Anyway, im gonna leave it at its how you use the damn set. I gotta go do work. oh, and sets were made for PvE, it doesnt matter if they meant for PvP or not, the set was built before the pvp, and probably rebalanced before the pvp too.

I do think smoke grenades should get a range enhancement though.

Ive partied with FOTM before, they kill bosses nicely (ICE/EM tends to skip the cone + rain), but unless im in a group thats already AoE happy it really isnt fitting a role, yes, AR/EM is good burst, ive teamed with one occasionally, mostly on GMs tho.

and for the comparison, archery is usually called 'gimp' but it meshes with devices extremely well, it doesnt mesh as well with the other secondaries because from what i understand the animations are awful.

dark/dark defenders have sets that work well together, yet many find the blast set "gimp" when they use it with ff or others just because it does less damage and by itself isnt enough control to save them.

devices can handle longer animations, the rest do shorter animations much easier, not to say you cant get the AoE's off, but your not getting as much as say a fire/ or ice/ would because their animations take a split second.

if you want a fix, i think you should be aiming for hit-detection on the trip mines, someone suggested shorter recharge / duration for the turrets, THOSE are good ideas, and higher BI for blaster primaries / defender secondaries would benefit everyone. even scrappers because people would stop getting so hung up on blapping

THIS thread is a long whine fest, your not going to lose much from this, and the set is still useful despite how much you say its "gimped" the archery/dev i partied with never used a mine/explosive/turret, he used the cloaking and TD, and he was good at his job. as in, the only thing left after his opener was lts and bosses. overkill is useless on a side note.

I'm saying that your focusing on single target a bit too much, the melee powers are good if your party is

a. missing scrappers

b. fighting AVs every mission, which is confined mostly to 40+

blapping is also the best way to solo, im not saying it isnt a good idea, im saying that its the smallest bang in a 6-8 man team, which IME is the fastest exp if your built for big teams, /dev is GOOD for big teams, BU outlasts a spawn in some of my groups, but isnt up for what? 2-3? TD is up 24/7 and as my troller was earth/ they never got it detoggled.

this thread is basically saying that 'nerfing' the turret is a huge deal and everyone said /devices was alread a gimp.

heres the truth: ITS NOT GIMP, it is good for BOTH AR and archery, who both have long animation times that make BU less effective because they cant cram 5-6 powers into the duration.

TD is quite useful for them and they excell at sustained damage, but not the greatest for AVs when they need to rely on single target.

competing with scrappers isnt exactly you know, WORKING.
and as you said fire/ and elec/ pull it off with AoE, ice can too if you use the rain and breath, AR does it fairly well, and ive SEEN archery do it consistantly. oh and nobody likes nrg/ apparantly so i actually havent gotten to see that one in action.

But really, the thing is, comparing devices to another secondary that acts completely different is in a nutshell, a bad idea

EDIT: this has been nagging at me, where on earth do you people get the idea trip mines define the powerset? think a /rad is defined by fallout and his pbaoe hold? they can ignore BOTH of those. dont get hung up on them, i suggested using the mines under your feet so if you draw aggro they die when they try to melee you.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

and the accuracy increase from TD adds more damage potential than most defensive corr sets, and the 25% more damage is far more useful if you actually team.

[/ QUOTE ]

This doesn't compute.

[/ QUOTE ]
you miss less, or you can slot more recharges... or damage, doesnt matter, all are an increase to DPS

[/ QUOTE ]

You can't slot more damage, unfortunately. You can slot more recharges instead of more damage, which can increase your output some. However, I don't think it's quite worth a 25% increase in damage.

[/ QUOTE ]

ahhh THAT part, that was reference to corruptors, which in actuality would be TECHNICALLY... 33% more if you go from the corruptors viewpoint (pre-enhancements) (100-75)/(75)=1/3=33%

the TD thing is seperate, just explaining why the blaster secondaries provide more direct damage bonuses. and some people use 2 recharges 2 accu 2 dmg, which is why TD would be able to boost dmg if they normally opt for recharges, i cant tell you the dmg boost from that tho

edit: to the other post... SUSTAINED bonus. BU isnt perma... but i know you wish it was

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

and the accuracy increase from TD adds more damage potential than most defensive corr sets, and the 25% more damage is far more useful if you actually team.

[/ QUOTE ]

This doesn't compute.

[/ QUOTE ]
you miss less, or you can slot more recharges... or damage, doesnt matter, all are an increase to DPS

[ QUOTE ]

Yeah, Targetting Drone is way better than having Tar Patch, or Enervating Field.

In bizzaro world!

[/ QUOTE ]
It is if your teaming with a dark/ defender already. plus you get more from slotting the extra dmg or recharge with the tar patch.
then again, dark/dark defenders can solo easily for a reason and radiation is one of the strongest support sets, try saying /cold pre-38 does more dmg or /thermal does more and I would say you might wanna think about a respec.

Your survivability is *mostly* not your concern, if you have a decent team, your concern is your damage, and making sure not to accidentally pull a second mob, but mostly the damage. if your dying in a team with heavy damage mitigation your either opening for a team that doesnt need you to, or the team has no idea what theyre doing.

a corruptor must use both to give the full benefit to his team, his blasts alone are kind iffy and the secondary leaves gaps where your twiddling your thumbs.

O_o scary...

I think people need to realise that the "big numbers" from the secondaries arent what you need to focus on, overall damage benefits a team, if you build for solo, expect to solo, team wont wait? maybe because its faster exp if you ignored the mines and only used them situationally.

blaster damage is much better, you just have to know how to use it.

oh and i agree, FF gen is mediocre at best... teamed with one corr who took acid mortar w/o ff gen, and one who did the opposite... guess which party did better.

and the accuracy increase from TD adds more damage potential than most defensive corr sets, and the 25% more damage is far more useful if you actually team.

-_- okay.... devices doesnt suck, it just meshes best with the least popular sets. And people shouldnt compare it to the melee secondary powers because, in a 6-8 man team... they arent very useful. or ill say AS useful... because they can still do good damage to bosses

And the other part was him saying TD allowing less slotting for even cons to +2s not being strong enough for teaming was kind of odd, since blasters/scrappers get the biggest hit to effectiveness from the level gap.

.... went out of my way to soften my complaint on that post too...

and it has paragraphs, i just didnt use a full line in between, and gee, i guess you think the best judge of your actions is yourself eh? not comparing how the party does with each setup, but just by single, personal, large numbers.

I have played a few mid-level corrs, and apparantly my "75%" is more effective than your 100%... which is odd, even with scourge. and here is why: when a fire/rad corr using his AoEs seems to be more effective than a fire/em blaster teamed with a rad/ defender... its because he gets hung up on his melee.

If you think someone who doesnt list a blaster in his sig cant have experience with them, you should realize my troller went 1-50 in 7 weeks, 40 levels in PuGs. I have had to play with many different blasters and scrappers, I have never had a team go "we need a scrapper" i HAVE however heard "we need a blaster" and you think they want melee? NO. do not get hung up on /em, /dev is a great set. This is not a huge hit either, and god forbid its hard to focus on a primary.

focusing on the secondary gave birth to scrankers, offenders, blappers, and scraptrollers. all which sacrifice overall effectiveness for specific situations.. (Aside from scrapper "scraptrollers" which give up soloability to focus on team-support).

The point of saying that IS that the other secondaries do not make devices look like a gimp. they just add melee, and thats about it, sure its higher damage per hit, but until /em can do that in AoE, i really couldnt care about getting an /em blaster.

if i see an archery/dev im happy because my troller deals with large amounts of aggro with very little damage output. the stronger the AoE... the better.

bit longer than I wanted, input from others + personal experience >>> personal experience

try it, it works oh so much better, I learned to read other opinions in order to improve my own playstyle years ago, in games where if you suck. your booted very. very quickly... (didnt happen to me personally, just a few support chars I teamed with) with 6 hours between groups even being formed.

more editing -.- the PuG bit is that I had to work with what was availably, and had to watch out for others and work my a** off, the only thing i could really focus on in my parties was: what powerset held aggro best and what powersets added the most damage.

you know what it came down to... fire/ tankers were the fastest exp and held aggro easiest without dying (ice couldnt handle AVs terribly well), archery/dev were the most useful blasters, AR/Dev came in second, but did it flashier.

note: i wasnt using auto-reply for a reason. read the heading

Now... i noticed you said you would be fighting over +2s in a party.... and you compared the trip mine AT etc to the melee from the other sets.... okay one, +2s should be the norm for a decent party. if your fighting higher and your contribution is heavily affected by damage and accuracy.... your not contributing as much as the blaster who is 1-2 levels above, even if you hit, you just arent. That said, TD is still very good, and you CAN slot less with it AND get better exp doing so.
also.... in a fast party (30 seconds max per mob group) the melee powers are pretty much useless on anything but bosses, on my controller the tanker can down a boss pretty fast from FS, scrappers? good for AVs and bosses, but i'd rather have an AoE blaster and a scrapper than 2 scrappers, a scrapper and a blapper. cant take the aggro? team with trollers and tankers, ive teamed with blasters who took melees, they ended up relying on FS'd nukes and the APP emp attack in order to keep up with my troller, a granite tanker, and a tri-form WS. please oh please save those god awful solo powers for the AVs. my fastest party pre 40 had a 40 archery/dev and a 39-40 fire tanker, AoE is your friend bar and a half every 15 minutes... okay, short of the 4 /kin +2 spines/ party it was my fastest but that cleared an outdoor in 5 minutes.
My point is, the best party blasters ive played with were an archery/dev and an AR/dev, the only /dev blasters i got to team with on my troller, other than that most were /EM and either soloed (and did it pretty well) or tagged along AV-hunting teams and did that well, but were nearly dead-weight till the AV. (aside from the nuke-happy one) you get some great powers in the early levels that benefit the most at the higher levels, the higher level powers? "meh" but you dont need to be worrying about those if you bother to get someone who can keep aggro off you. like one of the people saying it was gimped... the party wont pull across and just fight on the other side, so sit on your side and fire away, if you aggro theyll be blown away with "sniper level damage" and knockback. wait, damage mitigating secondary? :O just noticed. (seriously O_o)

->edit: too late, they all went and started a protest thread, or something like that... ho hum, the turret is mostly for show and the rest of the set is fine ... 9% tohit debuff heavily slotted? with 50% base for even con.... 18% increase in survivability...