Fulmens

The very, very high end stuff has gone up, then come down, since then. I think.

There are a few new ways to make inf; the old ways still work perfectly well.

What I think I'm trying to say is, if you feel like you need more inf, you can make it fairly easily.

Welcome back.

sypher_vendetta said

... am I the only one who loves the massive -Rech in psychic scream as well as the extra damage? Seriously? You could rip Drain Psyche out altogether and I'd probably still roll */mental.

So basically this is the conversation:
[Arbiter Hawk] We noticed Devices is and always has been behind. Here's a special bonus that most people can use about half the time and Devices can use always.
[everyone] FIX IT SO EVERYONE ELSE GETS THE BENEFIT or you hate us and don't want us to use our powers.
[Arbiter Hawk] *goes out at lunch and drinks heavily*

FF/* solos pretty well, once you get the pets. Go to the search window and select "Blasters" ...

Princess Darkstar: You're bad at math (or maths, I suppose, being British.) Please consider this before making math-based assertions.

All the people complaining about their "really tight builds" make me laugh. It's a BLASTER. You've got a really tight build because you're desperately trying to get some weird IO goal. If you were allowed zero Set Bonuses, you'd have like six extra powers and twelve extra slots and no idea what to do with them.

If that "weird IO goal" is survivability? Well, they just gave you a big boost up with that. If it's DPS? They just gave you a big boost with that, single-target.

I still think some across-the-board Resistance, in a world where a +1 boss can do 60% of your HP in one shot, is not a bad idea.

(And I love people talking about AR/Dev as the new death machines. I'll love it even more if it turns out to be true.)

So Airhammer's main argument on the Elec/Elec seems to go like this:

1. I like my Blasters just fine.
2. Therefore, I'm not changing my build or playstyle.
3. Therefore, none of these changes will affect me.
4. Therefore, Blasters got screwed.

If you're drowning and someone throws you a life preserver and you don't grab it, it's hard to make a case they didn't try to make things better for you.

The Regen change is large, maybe larger than I realize, but I don't think it works right.

Arcanaville came to the Regen-equivalent number by looking at smoothly applying damage over time; if you are smoothly applying damage over time Assault is better than Build Up and Aim combined. My memory's not what it was, but has anyone argued that, ever? I think some amount of "burst stopper" is important.

When players worry about Blasters becoming overpowered, I just hear the song from Oliver.

I'm happy that we're getting improvements, but ... please, sir, could I have some more?

I think of nukes [admittedly with a teamcentric bias] as "every fourth enemy spawn just goes away". So ummm 75% of the problem.

But yeah, this is a variation of "blasters are just fine."

From Arcanaville's analysis in my Survivability thread:

I've never seen them make a major change to powers and not give a freespec.

I will admit I haven't looked all that closely, having a ridiculous number of vetspecs anyway.

Absorb might work with +Regen. I agree that, in general, +Regen by itself is too little too late. [In my beat-to-death example, a +1 Freak Tank takes three attacks to kill a L32 blaster, so unless you're regenning a couple hundred HP in three seconds that's still going to be a problem for you.]

You sly devil, parallel processing like that...

Alexander_Drako said:

Arcanaville said:

newchemicals said:

Zul: I respectfully disagree. I'm not Werner or anything, but there are two requirements to solo an AV:

1) Outdamage their regen rate and 2) survive the experience.

I've only soloed one AV, that was a nin/nin stalker on countess crey; I think it took me ten minutes. The math works out to "small amounts of -regen make a ten minute fight into a three minute fight."

Mr_Nugglez: Almost every blaster is "extremely squishy" by the standards of any other AT. Fire/En is one of the squishiest, it is true, but it doesn't get all that much better. /Ice has a couple of solid survival tools, /Mental has a couple of solid survival tools, /Dev gives you the "trade a lot of damage for some survivability" option. On primaries, Sonic and Ice (I find ice/ice gives you more tools than you have time to use them) have a lot of survivability and, maybe, less damage to go with it. I'm not all that familiar with Dark/ and Beam Rifle/ yet.

I'm going to start out by suggesting- based on a cut-down Crab Spider- 25% Resistance and 10% Defense to all, on all the time, scaling up in the first 20 levels and built into the inherent. This is separate from any mez protection fix; I think that's a discussion for a different thread.

Surely someone out there can do better than ME.

There are a lot of threads that get bogged down in a lot of discussion of how much damage, relatively, Blasters do compared to other AT's. Is it 10% more than Scrappers? 20% more? How much, and how much should it be?

Everyone agrees, pretty much, that it isn't a good trade for 20% the survivability. (I'll go through that number in a minute.)

The reason for this thread is to discuss how much more survivability is needed to give Blasters something close to a level playing field, and how do we get it to them?

I phrased that carefully. A lot of people have said things in these discussions like "Blasters just die, get over it." Or "My blaster is fine." Or "ur doin it rong".

Blasters shouldn't accept a distant last place in survivability in return for a damage benefit that's small enough to argue about- they shouldn't accept a distant last place in survivability PERIOD.

Someone has to be last. I recognize that. It's going to be Blasters. I recognize THAT. But the gap shouldn't be so ludicrous.

Talking about L50, with several Incarnate powers, is not the point. Talking about builds that a specific primary/secondary combination can pull off (elec/en endurance drain, or ice/ice "survive the alpha, survive the fight" combos, or whatever) is not the point. Talking about builds that require IO access, eleven specific powers, and 46 slots, or whatever the "capped range" numbers are, is not the point.

The POINT is that a median Blaster using SOs and a median Scrapper using SOs are not even close.

I did a quick calculation and a level 32 SR scrapper is about four times tougher than a level 32 Blaster with a REALLY conservative build for the Scrapper.

How much tougher is a typical Defender? They have to give up a lot of offense AND they have to take a lot of time setting toggles and whatnot, but for Rad, Darkness and Storm I could easily make a case for factor-of-four. Maybe a factor of ten.

How much tougher should Blasters be, and how should we get there? I think a factor of two is not unreasonable; and if the technique we use to get there gives a few loopholes that make killer builds possible, I don't think that's a bad thing.

We haven't had a Blaster FOTM since they fixed a POWER OF TEN bug in August 2004, when the game was four months old. It's not something I'm afraid of.