Garent

I disagree, myself. Carnie and Vanguard psi defense is annoying, and the general robot psi resistance is annoying, but being able to continue dealing normal damage through an AV's tier 9 is huge to me. My mind/thorns dominator switches to a mesmerize/dominate attack chain when AVs tier 9. Only mesmerize has damage enhancements in it, and she does so much damage compared to the rest of the group at that point that she often draws aggro off of the brute.

To me, those moments are significant enough to make the drawbacks against certain enemy groups worth it.

As a person biased towards defenders, I already have my whining prepared. I fully expect for the general low power of ranged sets to be addressed through some kind of increase to blasters. I will then unleash torrents of whine about how corruptors and defenders deal less damage than controllers at high levels. There will be so much whine that everyone will become drunk off of my ramblings, and will begin to have discussions over what kind of cheese will best accentuate the flavor of X whine or Y whine.

On a more serious note, Arbiter Hawk's handling of peacebringers didn't give me a lot of confidence. I'm hoping his handling of blasters goes better.

If we're going to start talking about mez, I proposed in another thread a while back that enemies should use a mez suppression system similar to what pvp uses. Player can't be affected by another status effect while they already have one on them, there's a hard limit to how long they can be mezzed, things like that. Obviously, powers from archvillains and in trials could be set to ignore this where appropriate. Mez protection wouldn't be such a big deal if rikti and malta couldn't lock down players permanently. Beyond any balance issues, getting chain mezzed is just plain not fun.

I had an even worse typo in there before I fixed it...

I see your point. We need to at least keep Arbiter Hawk so we can sacrifice him to peacebringers. I'll begin the procedure to have him canonized posthumously.

Seven reworked secondaries, a new inherent, and twelve tweaked primaries in one issue? Sacrifices must be made in the name of justice. They will etch their names in to the blaster archetype with their own blood. We will honor them as those who saved us from the sins of game designers past.

Thanks! I'll get to it then. Huge post incoming.

Let's start by assuming for the sake of this post that blasters suck. If I have to debate that point this will get way too long. I'm going to start by identifying what I see as the factors to this. I believe that all three of them need to be addressed in order for blasters to be "fixed".

- Blast sets in general have dated design which results in many powers contributing little to the modern game as well as the sets as a whole underperforming compared to melee and assault sets.
- The blaster archetype in and of itself, as in their power modifiers and inherent, are rather poor.
- Support sets have a very low bar of performance.

Now to move on to my suggested solutions. I'll mark down which problem they're meant to address and give goals along with them. I'll begin with the most contentious one.

1. New Blaster Inherent: Overcharge (isn't this the name of the beam rifle nuke? Should probably be something different)
Effect: Yes, I'm serious. I'm another one of those losers suggesting a different inherent for an archetype. Overcharge is a third bar that regenerates continually and goes down when an attack is used. The blaster receives a damage buff based on how full the bar is, and while the bar is full past a certain threshold the blaster has a certain level of status protection. The UI should have a mark on the bar that clearly shows where this threshold is. Many blaster powers interact with the bar in unique ways (more on that later). Potentially, the bar regenerates at an increased rate while mezzed. The bar begins at zero when the blaster is rezzed.
Goal: Establish blasters as alpha strike specialists that quickly defeat enemies. This is not meant to suggest that they should be poor in sustained fights. The mez protection at high overcharge means that a blaster can not be easily stopped during the crucial first few moments of a fight. If the blaster does get mezzed later on, the regenerating overcharge bar means that they're likely to escape the mez sooner than it would wear off on its own, and when they do escape it they'll have a damage buff.

1a. Snipes have a different effect based on overcharge level
Effect: For non-blasters and for blasters who are not at full overcharge, snipes have no interruptable period. Snipes already have damage proportional to their recharge, so this requires no rebalancing of the powers. When a blaster is at full overcharge the power DOES have an interruptable animation, but has an added effect appropriate for the set it comes from. The added effect should often be a form of mitigation appropriate for the set that hits targets in a small area around the main target, though this wouldn't be appropriate for more offensive sets like fire. For example, energy blast's snipe could be a splash knockdown/back around the target similar to new propel.
Goal: Turn snipes in to attacks that can be placed in attack chains. The added effect specifically happens at full overcharge because that means the blaster is out of combat and the snipe is being used as an initiator. The added effects in general should allow the blaster to safely start fights while solo or on small teams.

1b. Nukes have their endurance crash removed and are usable while mezzed
Effect: Both the recovery debuff and the endurance crash are removed from any tier 9 powers that have them. This may necessitate increasing the initial endurance cost if deemed necessary. Replacing the endurance crash, a less extreme penalty like a damage debuff should be used. On a blaster, the nuke may consume all overcharge but will break free of any mezzes in the process. I'm not completely sure of that last one though.
Goal: Crashing nukes are meant to represent a recognizable comic book staple of the unstoppable force that unleashes all of his power in one gigantic attack and is weakened afterwards. I feel like this is an excellent concept, but that it can be mechanically modeled in a better way. Being able to use the nuke while mezzed helps increase its viability as an emergency power. The power breaking mez is conceptually appropriate and fun, as the user blasts through whatever was holding them. I'm still not sure about what extra cost the power should have once used. I feel like a lasting penalty is appropriate for the power's theme, and that it should be at a sweet spot where it's strong enough to be noticeable but not so much that it discourages future use. I'm not sure what that lasting penalty should be though.

1c. Build up restores overcharge by a certain amount.
Effect: Does what it says on the tin. The damage buff of the power would likely be reduced to compensate, though it should continue to act at full power if used at full overcharge so that it's still a viable power for increasing your alpha strike damage. Targeting drone from devices would instead give a buff to overcharge regeneration, an effect that would not suppress while mezzed.
Goal: Increase integration with the overcharge mechanic. My biggest hesitation about this is that people may try to use this to gain overcharge's status protection and be disappointed when they don't gain enough overcharge to reach the threshold or if the mez is too strong for them it to overcome, which would be really disappointing.

2. Update blast sets to new attack set design standards
Effect: Too numerous to list here.
Goal: I've been working on a big post about rebalancing blast sets in the same style as the buff/debuff set rebalancing post I made a few months back. That's outside of the scope of this post though. I'll just put down the quick note that single target status effects need to have competitive damage attached to them. This is a design paradigm that has been applied to a few attack sets already, and I feel it would be especially helpful to blasters as it would allow them to be able to mitigate damage without sacrificing offense.

3. Improve blaster modifiers to resistance, defense, and debuffs
Effect: Defense and resistance scale 0.075, which is the same used by scrappers and corruptors I believe. Tohit, damage, and defense debuff scale 0.09. For reference, corruptors are 0.1 and defenders are 0.125.
Goal: Improve the effect blasters get from their ancillary shields. This isn't a huge buff as blasters are currently at 0.070 scale, but I have trouble justifying values for them above scrappers. Improvements to blaster debuff values are very important as debuffs are an integral part of many blast sets. For those who are reading all of this, here's a thank you gift. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc. Blasters are currently at 0.07 scale for debuffs, so this would be a significant boost which I consider necessary as blasters currently get very little from blast debuffs which hampers the variety of sets they can choose without gimping themselves.

4. Remove the design paradigm of tier 1 blasts having an animation time of 1 second and tier 2 blasts having an animation time of 1.67 seconds
Effect: Return blaster animations to their previous states (which corruptors and defenders still use) and allow future sets to have animation times determined in more appropriate ways.
Goal: The blast time standardization was done as a result of defiance 2.0. Since the blasts were usable while mezzed, the developers were very worried about some blast sets benefiting from this more than others. I'm suggesting using a different inherent though, which removes the need for this. Even beyond that, this change would benefit sets both mechanically (1.67 animation time isn't that great for an attack that recharges in 6-8 seconds, and blasters don't have many choices for single target attacks) and conceptually (the standardization really cuts down on the uniqueness of sets).

5. Massively overhaul and improve support sets. Allow them to specialize in personal mitigation, control, or debuffs where appropriate.
Effect: The minutia of this is too much to get in to without making a post dedicated specifically to it. I'm talking about things like making taser an area control, replacing a power in dark manipulation with siphon life, and making ice patch a ranged power with respectable area (more similar to ice control's ice slick basically). To put it succinctly, make them lesser versions of defense, control, or debuff sets.
Goal: Give blasters effective tools for dealing with enemies while simultaneously increasing the uniqueness of the sets. Considering the state that manipulation sets are currently in, I consider replacing powers with different powers, ignoring the cottage rule, and getting the animation team involved in new powers to NOT be out of the question.



Conclusion: The end result of all of these things when put together is that we end up with blasters that are much stronger when initiating fights thanks to a damage buff and mez protection for a time. Improved secondaries and the special effect on snipes help in this area as well for certain sets. Beyond their abilities in dominating the "alpha strike" portion of a fight, they have respectable general survivability thanks to improved values on their defenses and debuffs, though improved secondaries contribute to this the most. The changes to snipes, single target status effects, and other things I couldn't include in this post result in blasters being much more competitive with melee and assault damage sets. The number of viable blaster sets increases as well, as the gap between the damage of the lower sets and the higher sets becomes much less wide and the defensive contribution of sets becomes a much more important metric.

You and me both. A storm/energy water user has been my main since launch, and he's getting rerolled for this.

Don't worry too much about it. Switching incarnate choices around is a lot easier than respeccing since you can craft multiple ones and switch them out at will when you aren't in combat.

The big drawback is that concealment's stealth suppresses while you're in combat, while cloaking device's doesn't, so cloaking device is much better at keeping you from accidentally alerting other enemies while attacking their friends.

Now that's a great idea.

because I'd rather have rare pvp with good people than frequent pvp. The bad seeds in the pvp community are a huge pain, and pvp isn't important enough to me to deal with that in my search for the good people in the main pvp community.

Semi-relevant but not directly related to the current topic or your post: I hate shield charge.

This is exactly the level of control I want out of the secondary as well. Having small area status effects would be a strong step in the right direction. As it is now, the immobilizes are basically an extra damage power and the mezzes are things like a single target fear with no damage.

I've considered suggesting making completely new secondary powersets that are better balanced (for example, fiery support to go alongside fiery manipulation) but that only solves the problem of moving player cheese. It has about as much chance of happening as an overhaul of current manipulation sets, if not less, since it involves more work.

I think we can all agree that blasters can be improved in some way that doesn't make them more similar to another archetype. I've thought of a lot of rather extreme measures (that I've been hesitant to share on the forums because of how extreme they are) that nevertheless wouldn't remove any playstyle options and would incorporate no elements currently being used by another archetype.