Comicsluvr

Very true. I never delete a toon, no matter how painful, until after at least lvl 22. Some builds just seem to stagger along until you hit SOs and then suddenly velvet ropes part and champagne falls from the heavens. The little gaps in the attack chain close, powers no longer suck all your end and enemies now seem to take notice of your damage.

I begin to understand why I see so many characters at the teens in the DFB...

This is going to sound selfish but I want both. There are times when I create a themed toon with the idea 'This guy will be EPIC! I want the James Bond end fight movie scene with hundreds of agents on both sides fighting while I launch my missile of whatever.' I LIKE the feel of that...the Dr Doominess of it. The idea of the bad guy who has class and style.

I also want the guy who has no issues breaking into hospitals and contaminating medicine just to see the effects.

We have heroes of every stripe. We have Vigilantes who maim and kill to get the justice they feel the bad guys deserve. We have Rogues who don't want the badge but want a chance to walk in the sun and get out of the Isles for a vacation. But what about the Villains? I see no problem with writing darker content, setting it as separate arcs and labeling it as such for the players.

Comics have done this for decades. Half of the Avengers have been wanted at one time or another. Many heroes are from out of this world (literally) but you never see THEM producing a green card. And while most of the bad guys have a certain level of class and style, others threaten to blow up buses full of school children just so they can escape. I'm all about choice in my games, especially when they're rated Teen.

Games these days feature assassins, thieves and killers of every type. Don't tell me that a more grim version of a story arc is going to corrupt the youth of the world or make the industry come crashing to the ground. Empirical evidence proves otherwise.

When I'm doing what I call an 'Ego fight' (no worries about outcome but my own or the other guy's ego), I'll go ahead and throw down fair and square as it were.

If I'm fighting for the life of someone else (in this case, our whole city/planet/reality), I will stalk, hide, knife, snipe, trip wire, bomb and otherwise 'cheat' any way I know how.

There are times when the getting there is more important. There are times when the outcome is the ONLY thing that's important.

If you doubt me, talk to the guys who didn't die because we 'cheated' and used the Bomb in WWII...

Actually, this idea appeals to me. We have destroyed zones like Boomtown and the Hollows, struggling zones like Faultline, but what about NEW construction? I'd like to see some of the swooping ramps mentioned up-thread by another poster combined with the idea of a new section of the city being built. Overlap some of the levels instead of making it duplicate Steel Canyon and throw in some new arcs written after the SSA #1. Maybe there's a thin spot in realities leading to Praetoria so their troops occasionally break through (like having a fire or troll rave event).

I'd rather see zones revamped if enough good ideas can be made for them. Barring that, put the earth-side moon transit area there to tease us until we get a Lunar Zone...

Too busy IMHO. As much as I love changing ammo to suit enemies the idea of having even more stuff to click on a high-level Blaster in the heat of battle is a turnoff for me.

I like the OP's ideas and I appreciate him going through and cillecting them. I'd rather see what the range changes and the cast time reductions do to the set before changing anything else though. Too many changes too soon = broken set...

THIS is why you can never leave the game Arcana...

Based on the number and length of threads for Blasters I have little doubt of that.

However it remains to be seen whether they are songs of praise or howls or protest. For myself I think it will be praise. The devs have tried to introduce new mechanics into the last few sets (Momentum for TW, Pack Mentality for BM) with generally positive results. I see this as a good thing.

Probably because many players don't like shopping where Doctor Octopus buys his clothes...

Seriously...at this point I'd try almost anything to try and make them more playable. Lots of Beta time...whatever.

I could see this easily. Three mildly scary Minions, two monstrous Lts and a lab assistant Boss throwing stuff on the other pets and debuffing the enemy.

I'd also like to see something spectral like Illusion or something close to it. Some sort of a mind or spirit Pet set. Clearly different from the very solid pets we have now...

From what Arcana said, this was one of the ways the Devs realized that Blasters were underperforming; leveling speed. Time spent dead and time spent mezzed were likely the other two.

I agree completely with your statement. Truth be told, I can understand why balance is so difficult and why the Devs haven't achieved it yet in a game this complex. They like to work from the risk vs. reward formula yet the squishy types ALWAYS take more risks. Blasters take more risks than anyone because they have the least amount of mitigation.

I like apples to apples comparisons so I ran some numbers:

At level 22 a Minion has 202 Health. A Blaster using Power Burst at lvl 22 with lvl 25 SOs (1 each Acc, End, Rech and Dmg) does 176 damage or about 87% of the target's Health. Not tough to believe that the other 13% would come from Defiance. All of this assumes NO Resistance on the part of the target which is seldom true. The rest of the attack chain (Power Bolt, Power Blast and Torrent) would be enough to defeat another Minion under the same circumstances. Casting and recharge times dictate that the Blaster could do this forever with enough End. Essentially that's 1 Minion defeated every 4-5 seconds as a baseline.

A Scrapper with Broadsword at the same level and with Hack, Slash, Slice and Parry in his attack chain will be defeating foes at roughly the same speed or perhaps a bit faster since the Secondary I chose was Regen and Quick Recovery alleviates possible End issues.

Two characters, 2 attack chains with 3 ST and one cone AoE each, all slotted with +3 SOs at lvl 22. They both defeat the enemy at approximately the same rate or close enough on paper. However the differences are important:

By lvl 22 EVERY melee character has access to Status Protection while Blasters can have CJ, Acrobatics and IOs for SOME protection.

Many of the Melee Secondaries have some form of self-heal, End recovery or both by level 22 or soon after. Blasters get no self-heal and those that get an End recovery power get it later.

Scrappers have 14 Primaries and 9 Secondaries while Blasters have 11 Primaries and 7 Secondaries.

The kill speed calculations above make NO allowances for the enemy fighting back. With little Status protection and no defenses the Blaster will be at a much higher risk for roughly the same reward. He will be more injured (which consumes Greens, forces Rest and prompts the player to include self-heal Pool powers in his build), tired (which consumes Blues and forces Rest) and mezzed (forcing down-time even if the character survives) than the Scrapper.

There will always be outlying data from other sets (by lvl 22 a Fire Blaster can have 3 AoEs and 3 ST attacks but will have fewer slots to spread around and Dark Blast gets a damaging self-heal at lvl 28). However I think that it's clear that comparing Scrappers to Blasters is a losing game for the Blasters. Scrappers can inflict the same damage or more with less risk and that clearly breaks the Dev's Risk vs. Reward formula.

I currently have an Axe Brute and a Mace Brute under 20 and after Fury builds they can definitely 1-shot even-con or even +1 Minions. As I'm running them at +0/X2 right now I can keep Fury at +80% with no problem and over 100% is not uncommon. The rest of the slotting is DOs at the moment. No damage auras or red Insps required...

The three basic commands you get in the Power Tray are a bit flawed. Rt-click on them and select 'Edit' and you can edit them. Change Attack Aggressive and Follow Aggressive to Defensive. Now when the pets follow you they won't run off and attack unless you or they are attacked. When you tell them to Attack something they'll kill it, kill anything around it, then return to you.

Experiment with the commands on slower missions until you feel comfortable.