Erratic

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I haven't played a blaster for a long time, but I completely agree that their damage needs to be upped significantly, specifically at the higher levels.

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An increase in damage doesn't stop you from being disoriented/slept/held/immobilized. It doesn't stop you from being swamped so long as you can't distribute the damage to the individual targets faster than a certain rate (that given the lessons of the past isn't likely to occur).

I fail to see the fascination with damage in terms of fixing Blasters. Damage wasn't decreased on their part on the road to breaking them, why would damage being upped be the fix?

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Defenders have the same hits as scrappers.


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NO THEY DO NOT!

Blasters, Controllers, and Defenders all have the same hps.

Scrappers have 15% more or so.

Tankers have 40% more than Scrappers.

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Why would any informed person, who wants to be effective, play a Blaster over a Scrapper as the game now stands? Blasters need a boost in damage to fufill their role in a team.

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Because for some its a matter of how you do something, not that you do something.

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If what you are saying is, "do it to be different than everyone else, do it because it is harder," then I agree with you. That's why I played my Blaster through to 50 and didn't ditch when it became very hard and very frustrating in the late game.

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Basically. The idea of zapping things appeals to me generally more than the idea of punching things. So I'm inclined to play ranged damage types. For some that inclination is absolute and so they are going to play Blasters and not Scrappers given a reasonable choice. And if the choice isn't reasonable they are going to take their dollars and go elsewhere.

My earlier statement is that wanting to play a Blaster is sufficient reason for some to choose to play a Blaster.

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I am not trying to convince you Erratic I am merely pointing out what I believe as fact.

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There, fixed that for you.

Given the game could be made in any particularly way, you're going to have to offer a pretty nifty definition of "overpowered" for your claim to stand.

By DAoC standards, simply being able to fly above your target and shoot down on them would be "overpowered". Oh wait, we're not playing DAoC are we. So forgive me if your "it just is" arguments aren't compelling when as best I can tell they rely on some "feeling" that doesn't have basis in objective reality.

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Would you two knock it off? This is " blaster damage", not "defenders issues and problems"

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I believe I already indicated this wasn't an appropriate area for delving, as I was asked to do so, into Defender issues. But the conversation is wide ranging because firmly establishing where Blasters stand isn't going to take place in a vacuum. If you're not smart enough to grasp that. . .well, that as may be. If you are, then you're grandstanding.

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Call me when you see an Empath Defender soloing an AV or herding.


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Yep I am calling! My empath can herd just fine. Provided I buff myself and heal myself while herding. I don't herd mezzers though without mez enhancements.

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I should have qualified. Yes, anyone can herd greens. Call me when you're out gathering most of a mission's mobs for a team where people want real experience, not what they could get on their own.

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Yes, SOs have ruined the game balance of this game and HOs have thrown it more out of whack in PvP. It is fairly obvious but this is not the place to argue about it.

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Argument by repitition is not considered valid, nor is argument by assertion. Try to refrain from both in the future.

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Combine too that since Blasters don't have to worry about doing anything other than damage, they slot their damage abilities well at low levels. A Scrapper who does that and ignores his defenses ends up in the hospital a lot. A Tanker may be focused on his defenses, but he does have to split time with his offense as well. Controllers and Defenders too have plenty of reason to be dividing things up.

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That is not entirely true.

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Well yes, it was a generalism.

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A regen scrapper can afford to spend alot more slots on his primary in the lower levels than most scrappers. Even so a scrapper does not need to slot his attacks and can afford to slot his defense unlike a blaster that HAS to slot his attacks or he is a dead man with nothing to fall back on.

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Can't say about Regen, I've only played Dark Armor, Invulnerability and Super Reflexes (character deleted), and on those you slot your defenses and you slot your offense because too little of either and you're dead, dead, dead. I do have a friend that I played up to 50 with who is Regen and I very clearly recall the jokes about how often he died at lower levels.

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My god it was insane. Lets just say that I have no problems finding tanks, scrappers, or defenders. Blasters though love to get the invites but there are too few of them.

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Probably better than 80% of the teams I've been on in the past week have had a Blaster on them and the ones that didn't were 2- and 3-man teams, so go figure they didn't have other various other ATs on them either.

Indeed, when I check to see who is looking, it is far from Blaster symbols making the largest showing in population.

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They are continually finding ways to make mobs harder because the player base is overpowered.

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Not the player base, but segments of the player base. The Summer of City of Blasters is what brought about the changes in Issue 2. And Scrappers and Tankers passing videos about showing them soloing AVs and herding hundreds of warwolves brought more.

But haves and have nots already existed and despite the contention that SOs made everyone powerful, most assuredly it did not. Call me when you see an Empath Defender soloing an AV or herding.

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Instead of pushing the game towards bigger and bigger numbers they should have made the enhancements obtainable smaller and balanced the powers from there.

Which would have taken care of:

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Some would call it a state where they get to have fun with their characters as opposed to always be running out of endurance, being casually hit, easily damage, etc.

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Hardly, it would have shifted where the complaints were coming from, nothing more.

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Can I ask why are blasters solid up to say level 20?

What makes their damage good till then but fall apart later?

The cap is in play then as it is later, so it can't be that can it? Or is it that you don't really keep getting better attacks while the scrapper does?

I don't know for real but could better later attacks be the problem. Hack is much weaker then headsplitter. But you get snipe one of your best damage attacks very early. Maybe what's needed besides mezz defense is better late attacks.

I don't know just asking.

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My theory which has every right to be wrong is: The lower-level game is balanced for low defenses (since no one has really matured their defenses...tankers come close, scrappers not so much) and immature offense. Blasters can fairly rapidly slot out their main attacks and don't have to worry about defenses, so the lower-level game is practically tailor-made for them.

It gets harder later as the game adjusts to try to keep up with tanker and scrapper defenses and defender/controller buffs/debuffs.

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Combine too that since Blasters don't have to worry about doing anything other than damage, they slot their damage abilities well at low levels. A Scrapper who does that and ignores his defenses ends up in the hospital a lot. A Tanker may be focused on his defenses, but he does have to split time with his offense as well. Controllers and Defenders too have plenty of reason to be dividing things up.

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Why would any informed person, who wants to be effective, play a Blaster over a Scrapper as the game now stands? Blasters need a boost in damage to fufill their role in a team.

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Because for some its a matter of how you do something, not that you do something.

Yeesh, people need to stop thinking in such mercenary terms.

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Defenders are not fine.

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Okay I'll bite, what problems? Other than specific power problems I have not seen any problems with defenders as a whole so please enlighten me.

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This really isn't the place to get into a full blown discussion of Defender issues, the topic at hand being Blaster issues.

I'll note a few in quick passing that are AT wide, but keep in mind that unlike other ATs, the variance between Defender capabilities and roles varies considerably so to an extent it is a matter of a bunch of subgroups each with specific issues (which is probably why Defenders continue to languish as the only AT not to recieve or even be promised an actual review despite claims in this forum otherwise).

* Secondary endurance costs were adjusted as part of reviewing Tankers, but no consideration was ever taken of Defender's primary powersets.

* Despite repeated assurances that Defenders are better with their powers than Controllers are with the ones they share it continually comes to light that various powers perform the same on both sides. (Pay the more than Blasters to do the least with shared powers due to having them as secondaries, pay the same as Controllers to do the same things with shared powers even though having them as primary.)

Oh, and Defenders don't have mez protection as a whole--one primary features protection of any sort that can effect the user. And no, I don't think it needed or warranted.

Damage is not a moot point. Defenders and Tanker were paired in their damage scales and now for some unknow reason Tankers get a boost in theirs, bringing them into the realm of normalcy with every other primary/secondary value relationship whereas Defenders continue to be massively out of whack. I'll admit that Kinetics and Radiation primary do not need more ability to deal damage (soon to add Dark to that list), but Force Field and Empathy are primary powersets too (back to that bit about subgroups).

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Really? Just who is suffering?

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Hmm, first they nerfed hasten, then they nerfed AM.

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I was quite torqued about it at the time but have long admitted I was wrong on it. What they did to AM and Hasten was make it so that there was a reason to fully slot the powers. That makes sense. Its the same thing that eventually drove the Invincibility neft (in part) and will someday bring about Fearsome Stare being "fixed".

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Then there were the mob changes they made. The list goes on, but they have made many changes based on what SOs would allow players to do when they were fully slotted.

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And? How does that equate into suffering (nevermind you didn't answer the question)?

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It would have been far easier to balance enhancements with the game rather than leave everyone in an overpowered state.

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Some would call it a state where they get to have fun with their characters as opposed to always be running out of endurance, being casually hit, easily damage, etc.

Last I looked my characters of all ATs continue to suffer defeats.

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Defenders are fine. Controllers have a problem because the order of their powers is wrong. Just poor design in my opinion and no excuse for it either.

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Defenders are not fine. They simply gave up as a community after continuously being ignored in threads far longer and larger than any other community spawned that eventually got them the developers special attention.

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SOs are unbalancing the game and forcing them to make things difficult to the point that in order to challenge a minority the rest of the population suffers.


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Really? Just who is suffering?

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However since a blaster cannot stay at range indefinately due to the rooting nature of his attacks you cannot assume that blasters will not be in the same position that scrappers are.

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Then is this a partial solution for Blasters? Remove the need to be stationary from their ranged powers?

Recharge time on Voltaic Sentinel is 60s, not 120s.

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I don't think that's correct, but it would obviously take a field test to prove it either way.

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Its been tested. It was hashed out in the Defender portion of the forum this past August, tested, and verefied. Each additional EF takes the amount of damage it would add by itself and stacks it.

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I have read elsewhere on these forums that there is a programmed hard cap to just how much a villain's resistance can be debuffed (just like there is a hard cap of +400% to your damage bonus).

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Perhaps but that's not a mathematical limit and even if so that limit also applies to the Ill/Rads who presumably will be using their weaker version of EF for the same purpose. In any event, the EFs are not subtracting from the affected's resistance, they cause the affected to take extra damage as if their resistance had been lowered and do so in parallel, not serially. (Such a shame that's probably the extent to which I'll use anything I studied in circuits.)

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I think you are grossly underestimating the advantage EIGHT teams hunting very quickly has over ONE team hunting super duper quickly (I think your defenders should be operating in 2 groups of 4 between buff rounds, which would help a bit).

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I will concede that the nature of the optimization is probably something that would have to be discovered in play and probably would vary from zone to zone, though I think more serves the Controllers than the Defenders.

As to leaving survivors, is the goal to scour the zone clean or rack up the fastest and easiest xp? Are you going to stop at individual mobs and waste time toasting them with either group? While there are spawns that are larger than the area of a Ball Lightning, most aren't anywhere near that large.

Lastly, keep in mind the 8 teams hunting seperately routine requires gathering periodically to dole out the benefits of AM. By keeping the team together you avoid the time loss, though that could be addressed by splitting into 4 man teams and having one team completely equipped with Recall Friend.

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Yes, I read your post.

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It doesn't sound like you did. I already dealt with most everything you mentioned, but I'll repeat it for emphasis .

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If "Yes, I did" doesn't make the matter clear, then I suggest you may suffer from perceptual difficulties.

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The pets and the Illusionists are getting the same benefits but I don't believe the pets have the same speed of damage delivery.

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Sure they do. EVERY one of them has the damage output of about 6-7 normal Ill/Rad's (you can check the math above if you like), which I can assure you solo very effectively in Hazard zones already (with their measly 2-3 pets at a paltry +230% damage attacking at a feeble 130% normal rate). I team with an Ill/Rad regularly, and I know how effective they are once they get Phantasms.

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You miss the point totally, which was one of logistics and moving your circus about.

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But for comparison, each Phantasm will have an Energy torrent up every 8s/340% = 2.35s, just the same as any energy defenders in your group (actually I think the Phants get it a slight bit faster, if Hero Planner is correct about the 12s recharge time on Torrent for defenders vs. the 8s for blasters/Phants). Except there's about 4-5 times more of them. Admittedly, I AM talking about the level 33+ game here, not the level 18-32 game where the defenders should have a pretty clear edge (Phantom Army is unbuffable via any means except SO's, although they will benefit from any debuffs).

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First it was Defenders have the edge to 18, now to 32. Only have to squeeze out that last 18 levels I guess.

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The key words in what you wrote being, "they're starting to take out groups as fast as they can drag their horde of Phantoms to them".

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Yeah, that's from 18-32, before they get Phantasms.

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That the post 32 practicality of moving the horde, keeping it from getting distracted by passing too close to something that you didn't want to attack (which of course won't survive but may very well not be worth the effort).

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As to danger, I'm pretty sure the Defenders aren't in much danger either. 8 AMs means status effects probably pass in the blink of an eye. 8 EFs makes incoming damage laughable, and 8 Radiant Auras. . .well, any hit had best be a one-shot kill, which is unlikely under 8 AFs, assuming there all that many hits under 8 RIs.

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Agreed, neither team is in much danger. I was just pointing out that the controllers are even more unkillable. But your defenders should be splitting up into smaller teams (probably 2 teams of 4, but 4 teams of 2 might be workable) anyway, which lessens their defenses somewhat. But there IS a cap on how much a mob can be debuffed, so at some point you get no extra benfit from any more EF's/RI's (IIRC -100% is the resistance debuff cap, so only 3 EF's should stack for any actual effect there. I don't know what the -dam cap is, maybe 10-25%?).

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(1) Solo I can stand up to groups of oranges or a red or two. Give me a partner and things are considerably safer. Give me two and its going to take stupdity on our part to die.

(2) There is a limit to how much RI brings--a 95% chance for the Defenders to hit and a 5% chance for the mobs to hit. EF however does not, despite the mathematical obviousness of it all, work by additively subtracting from resistance. Each one stacked after the first adds the amount of damage it would do were it the only one there. There is no mathematical limit (in the sense you were reaching by considering -100% resistance) this way as you can continue to add +42%. In theory 2 teams of 8 each using EF would bring 16x the benefit, 3 teams 24x, and so on.

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Phantasms don't pass through each other that I've ever noticed. . .they can block both each other and their master's movements. (Had a friend get trapped on a CoT mission due to his own Fire Imps. . .talk about funny.)

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Phantasms FLY, and so will you, remember? And you won't be in missions anyway, each controller will be going solo after Hazard zone groups at the Flight movement cap. New Phantasms will suffer for awhile, true, but it shouldn't take long for them to catch up with groups available every 50-300 feet throughout a Hazard zone.

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Wasn't suggesting that you'd be in missions. The point was that they block each other. Admittedly flying helps over the case of groundpounding imps, but it is still a consideration once you get the numbers up high enough.

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Phantasms use Energy Torrent. They'd better be one-shot killing as otherwise what you're going to rapidly end up with is mobs spread all over the place due to knockback.

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See above. With flight your Phants will be doing knockDOWN during your vertical assaults. And yes, they will be one shot killing pretty much all the minions anyway, with any remaining lt's/bosses going down 4-8 seconds later as the fire gets more concentrated.[/qutoe]

Some will be doing knockdown. The ones close to the ground will be doing knockback.

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Given the Controllers have absolutely no control over the Phantasms and how they decide to attack, their attacks aren't coordinated for best effect, the Defender's attacks are. ("Everyone, target the guy on the center and start blasting when you see me start.")

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Phantasms are retarded, yes, but you CAN control them to some degree. Coordination also simply doesn't matter as much when everything can be defeated inside 10 seconds anyway.

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I do not think you can confuse lack need for coordination with there being no benefit to coordination. Heck, have 7 of the Defenders target the 8th to be on auto-assist and all the 7 have to do is give the proper responses at the right time. Targetting is automatic and only what the leader decides to attack is being attacked. If we consider skipping RI and EF and just concentrating on speed of killing, Ball Lightning is available in just over 3s. Each of the Defenders can have Tactics, which at full slotting is giving the entire group the benefit of +300% Accuracy, so missing isn't an issue. Skipping RI and EF usage, have the 7 assisting Defenders put themselves on auto-follow with Ball Lightning on auto-click while targetting their leader.

In my haste of posting yesterday I quoted the damage figure for Lightning Bolt, not Ball Lightning. Ball Lightning is an initial hit of 9.92 followed by 4 ticks of 5.95 when unslotted. The above routine gives 317.44 damage with 4 ticks of 190.4 damage. That is a total yield (without EF) of 1079.04--sufficient to kill most things through +3 level.

So the routine for the Rad Defenders could be simply to zoom by a spawn, pause long enough to toss 8 Ball Lightnings, and continue on to the next content that by the time they reach the next spawn the last one is dead.

This should underscore the benefits of coordination. The Defenders spend no more time at a spawn than it takes to toss whatever the agreed upon damage tool is. (While an AE that does all of its damage at once would be preferable, radial to the target application and minimum activation time trump non-DoT status).

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I'm not saying the team of 8 Rad defenders is not sick. They really really are. I should know, I have one myself. But being able to share the benefits of 8*AM over ~36 pets makes every Ill/Rad a mini army unto himself.

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Zoom by, one second to lob Ball Lightnings, zoom off. Ball Lightning recharged in the time it takes to travel to the next set of targets. Can you move your army of Phantasm that quickly, getting them to all attack and be ready to move in only a second?

Yes, I read your post. The pets and the Illusionists are getting the same benefits but I don't believe the pets have the same speed of damage delivery. The key words in what you wrote being, "they're starting to take out groups as fast as they can drag their horde of Phantoms to them". Phantasms don't pass through each other that I've ever noticed. . .they can block both each other and their master's movements. (Had a friend get trapped on a CoT mission due to his own Fire Imps. . .talk about funny.)


As to danger, I'm pretty sure the Defenders aren't in much danger either. 8 AMs means status effects probably pass in the blink of an eye. 8 EFs makes incoming damage laughable, and 8 Radiant Auras. . .well, any hit had best be a one-shot kill, which is unlikely under 8 AFs, assuming there all that many hits under 8 RIs.

Phantasms use Energy Torrent. They'd better be one-shot killing as otherwise what you're going to rapidly end up with is mobs spread all over the place due to knockback. Given the Controllers have absolutely no control over the Phantasms and how they decide to attack, their attacks aren't coordinated for best effect, the Defender's attacks are. ("Everyone, target the guy on the center and start blasting when you see me start.")

Suffice to say, I'm not convinced of the Phantasm superiority.

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I seriously doubt anything could top an 8 * Ill/Rad team. . . .

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Why do people challenge me this way?

You have 8 Rad/* Defenders who have taken the obvious powers. AM is a 0.3 factor to recharge and a 25% boost to damage. With 8 people each running it you're looking at a 2.4 factor to recharge and a 200% boost to damage. Combined with the base 100% you only have another 100% to cover, so let's consider level 38 Blast powers shall we?

You slot them with 3 Damage SOs and 3 Recharge SO's. Due to AM's effects they are all hitting the cap at 400%. with 3 Recharge SOs plus perma-Hasten plus 8 AMs you're looking at a total factor of 3*(1/3) + 8 * 0.3 + 0.7 = 4.1, so you're dividing the recycle time of the level 38 Blasts by 5.1.

Those powers recycle in 360s base. After all of this the recycle in 70.58s. Let's call that 71s.

Now, each Rad/* Defender has Enervating Field. As tested, the result of stacking is that each adds 42% damage that does not respect damage caps because it is making the mob take more damage, not causing the person dealing damage to deal more damage. 42% * 8 = 336%.

So every 71s one of the Defenders can set off a level 38 blast power that will deal 736% of base damage.

My Thunderous Blast, unslotted, versus even con targets, deals 33.08+66.16+33.08 damage, or 132.32 damage. Let's assume they all deal roughly the same. At 736% that works out to be 973.88 damage to even cons.

973.88 damage to even cons translates to:

876.49 to +1s
779.10 to +2s
633.02 to +3s

You'll likely be clearing the field of these, but in case you aren't consider that we are dealing with 8 Defenders, each of which possess AE attacks. Consider Ball Lightning, which unmodified deals 54.25 damage. With this group it would be tossed for 399.28 extra damage to even cons. When whoever is up to use their level 38 power the other 7 Defenders might as well do something, like each tossing an AE. This gives total damage output of 399.28*7 + 973.88 = 3768.84 damage.

3768.84 damage to even cons works out to:

3391.96 to +1s
3015.07 to +2s
2449.75 to +3s

Pretty nifty, no?

And what to do in the roughly 70s between level 38 power usage? Well, those AEs that have been being tossed about normally cycles in 20s or so. Divide by 5.1 and this becomes 3.92s. So roughly every 4s the group can toss out 399.28*8 = 3194.24 damage. . .only about 700 less than when one is using a level 38 power. Let me repeat for emphasis: EVERY 4 SECONDS!

I think that trumps the Illu/Rads.

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Against higher level things, buffs are always better.

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There may be an imbalance between the two, but buffs aren't exactly working in a vacumn.

Say you have a damage buff that adds 50% to your damage. Fine, against a +1 Mob you're at 90% effectiveness so you're dealing 90% of (100 + 50) = 135%. You would have been dealing 90% without the buff, so the buff brought you 90% of 50% = 45%. Now suppose you have a debuff that amplifies damage by 50%, same scaling applies, same end result.

If you want to leave the realm of damage, Accuracy Buff and Defense Debuff work towards the same end--making you hit more often. Unfortunately there have been contradictory statements by the developers about how Accuracy buffs work. However the scaling pattern is the same. Your base chance to hit a mob is 75%. +1 level drops that to 68%. Notice that 75% * 90% = 67.5%, which rounds to the 68% figure tossed about. Your inherent accuracy declines by the same amount a Defense debuff would.

Soul Healer's Guide to Radiation Emission can be found here.

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Power Activation Recharge Damage
-------------------------------------------------------------
Charged Bolts 2 4 33.08
Lightning Bolt 2 8 54.25
Ball Lightning 1 16 9.92+5.95x4
Short Circuit 3 20 5.95x5
Zapp 6 12 91.31
Tesla Cage 2 10 4.95
Voltaic Sentinel[+] 3 120 41.00
Thunderous Blast[*] 4 240 33.08+66.16+33.08


[+] Voltaic Sentinel does not report fractional damage, fires up to 10 times.
[*] Thunderous Blast sometimes gives a 4th package of 33.08 damage
</pre><hr />

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#1 End drain only works if they're fully drained, partial, it's a no go.


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Ooops. That's not true. Some AV powers require an amount of Endurance - so that if the AV doesn't have it - he can't use it. So bringing one down to 0 isn't exactly necessary to have an impact.

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If a power requires 15% of a mob's power bar to use then you must drain that target to under 15% to deny it to him. Contrast that to any other secondary effect which has immediate results upon application. Knockback occurs and the target wastes time standing up each and every time you succeed at knocking it down. Slowing immediately reduces how often abilities recharge and how often attacks come. Extra damage leads directly to a shorter fight. Only drain requires multiple applications to get to the point where you're denying the target capabilities, and in the case of AV's they get back endurance so quickly that it is highly unlikely that you're going to ever deny them the use of a power.

I fought Nemesis Rex just the night before last while playing my Radiation/Electrical Defender and I can assure you that draining played absolutely no role in defeating it. My damage was the only significant contribution I made.