Great_Scott

[ QUOTE ]
Fully slotted with DMG SOs + Build Up= 400%

So the only things outside this that could ever even break that cap are HOs, Aim, Assault, and having a Kinetics troll/def on the team.

In essence, boosting the blaster damage cap would benefit maybe 5% of the total game experience. So let's drop that principal debate please and focus on something that will actually do something constructive for us all.

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Ok, I admit it, I'm lost. Really Lost. Why are you negating your own argument? All you're doing is proving that raising the Blaster damage cap will help...

I don't know how to explain this to you, since you clearly don't understand the way the game works....so I'll be blunt.

HO's, Aim, Assault, and (Almost all) Defender powers will raise your damage from 400%......to 400%.

That's right, since Blasters can reach thier own damage cap defenders can't buff them any more. They get no benefit from damage buffs of any kind at all.

This is why that hard cap needs to be raised 100% or so...

[ QUOTE ]
Well, here's what you do: Take any blaster and an inv scrapper. Keep track of how much damage you take as the blaster, mainly trying to keep enemies at a distance. Include melee damage you take as a result of getting mezzed from range and then getting a beatdown. Also note the average time/how many attacks it took to take down each enemy.

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Dammit, while I agree with you, the dev's don't. Heck, I even know why.

Look at it the way the Devs do: A Blaster will never get "mezzed" because they are getting buffed by a Defender. A Blaster will never take melee damage because a Tank is absorbing it all.... see a pattern?

The Dev's don't care about balancing a "Grouping" AT to match a "Solo" AT. Blasters are going to be compared with Controllers and Defenders for balancing, that's about it.

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If you could earn half a bar of xp for fighting one boss and a couple of his minions in half an hour, I think that would be better than earning half a bar of xp for fighting two hundred minions in a half an hour.


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Good plan. It will make missions seem more Heroic.

Some builds can't deal with multiple Lieutenants, or any Bosses at all while soloing. It would take a lot of rebalancing for the game to support this.

Blasters don't have long, drawn out fights. I wish they could. Blasters bushwhack some poor villain or die within 15 seconds, usually...

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Wouldn't it feel really heroic if every once in a while, say once or twice a level, you were forced to fight a really tough baddie that took you a really long time to beat, and bang, two or three bars of xp for chasing him all across Talos and finally nailing him at the foot of the Talos statue?

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If this wasn't a casual-play solo-friendly MMO? Sure! That would be awesome!

I fail to see how that would be workable in CoH though... but what do you mean by a really long time? 5 minutes? 15? Half an hour?

This idea has merit...but as always the devil's in the details. Of course, such a mighty foe would be immune to holds and debuffs, most likely, so I fail to see how a Controller/Blaster/Defender could participate as well.

One good thing about this idea is that we'd finally get a "acceptable XP/Hour" number out of the Devs...

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Why? Are you assuming that after the game is balanced that the amount of XP given by mobs can't change? Perhaps if red and purple mobs were a challenge for a group the devs would raise the xp on them? Seems reasonable. The Devs have raised the xp on mobs that are more dangerous to reflect risk VS. reward so I so no reason to assume that if there was an appropriate level of risk the devs would not give an approriate xp reward. Or in other words it will not slow the game down as much as you think.

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Concern, I have great respect for you as a source of good ideas. That said, I can't go along with this.

If the game truly becomes harder, leveling will slow. The downtime between taking on more powerful mobs for more XP will ensure this. I was going to rant about this in a seperate post, but I'll get into it a little here....

Consider the new Elude. It's the poster child for the new slower game. I agree that it shouldn't have been perma. I agree that it's a situational power.

OK, now that that is out of the way, let's look at how people play the game (something the Devs don't do, as was recently shown).

How is the new Elude useful? It's not. To me it's not even worth taking. The reason is that it's a 3 minute power with a 12+ minute recycle time. This is entirely unfeasable in practical use.

Can I clear a mission in 3 minutes? No.
Do single fights last that long? No.
Is an AV/Monster encounter over in 3 minutes? No.

I can't use it in every encounter, and I can't use it to chain encounters, and it doesn't last long enough to be of use in AV fights. I call that either "lots of downtime" or "don't take the power".

If Elude was perma-able and one third as effective, I'd take it. If it lasted 15 minutes and had a 12 hour downtime, I'd take it. Anything else is simply an occasional boost, and I'd rather not even bother fooling with it.

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Tanks fought to do 80% of the base damage of scrappers because it was (and still is) impossible to play Colossus, the Hulk, Strong Guy, and so forth. Spider-Man is more of a CoH tank: nigh-impossible to kill and does good damage while snarking off bad guys. Do not take away what the Tanker boards have begged to get since beta.

Some Scrappers are too tough. States has hinted that Invulnerability needs a little toning down. Reflexes and Dark Armor have very real problems. Regeneration has been a rollercoaster. I suspect if there were more than 4 Scrapper secondaries there would be more woes to list.

The problem is not that Controllers get pets. The problem is that Controllers get pets only late in the game, and not all Controllers at that. Ergo, Controllers can't solo for 64% of their career and then suddenly they can -- some can very well.

Defenders are, for the most part, fine. Multi-role classes typically suffer from the "jack of all trades, master of none" syndrome.

Some Blasters are okay. Some are not. If you take all of your primary and secondary powers and only a travel power, then you're probably not okay (unless you're */Ene or */Dev).

There are exceptions to all of the above. To paraphrase Statesman: "It's not that all X's are broken. It's that some X powersets are broken."

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I agree with what you said, Adron.

I made that post from the "power-nerfer's" point of view. I posted what I posted to show that balancing in the near term is either pointless or bad.

Specifically, there are as many opinions on balance as there are people, and they're all wrong...even me!

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Man, if one of the side effects of adjusting the average power level downward is to cut way back on the mezzing in the game, I'm all for it.

I'm not even against adjusting the average power level downward, as long as the end result is a fairly equitable playing field.

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I've never been against it, really. I just think that it will take longer (2-3x) and be less fun or everyone involved.

I'll elaborate on that for the nerf-happy people. I'll admit that in a perfect world taking everyone down to a weaker level would be a great idea. I also believe in Communism, too. The problem with these great ideas is people.

Let's ignoring the reality of human behavior for a moment and check out the nerf everyone to make the game better idea.

Nerf Change: PvE is too easy. Obviously, I agree that PvE is too easy for some people with some builds. So let's fix it!

The List of Problems:

Tanks do too much damage.
Scrappers are too tough.
Controllers get pets.
Defenders...... need to be looked at later.
Blasters...... are ok for now.

Well, the Tank fix is to do 66% damage from Blasters, the same as Defenders do now. Both support damage ATs should do 2/3 base damage - that's balanced, after all. We could lower Tank defense as a balancing move, instead, but CoH is teaming-friendly, so that's out.

Scrappers by slotting all Defense, can get too tough. I'll ignore for now that slotting defensively should be a player option, and just (wrongly) assume it's a problem in capability, not customization. So, sure, let's keep the Issue 4 proposed Regen changes. The /Invuln set will be stay the same, but the Resistance cap will be set to 66% (that number again...odd...). SR will be left alone, but a Defense cap of 132% (for the SR set powers) will be put into place. That should floor a +1 boss, so that should be enough for Scrappers.

Ah. Controller pets. Well, we could always set the recharge time to 10 minutes. That would ensure no herds of pets, right there.

As far as SOs, go, let's not make them rare. Let's not make them expensive. Let's just change all enhancements to 5%/10%/20%. That should work fine.

Allowing 30% enhancements for drops only is a great idea, but then people will try to farm them, or worse yet, they will be considered "loot", like a +4 sword in EQ2. That's the last thing that CoH needs.

Or......we could just make the 5/10/20 SO change and reduce the effect of Hasten to about where Quickness is. That would be about the same level of change. Except that Blasters would still need some kind of minor boost.

This sounds simple and makes sense and would work. I wouldn't like it, but I'm the minority. The real problem is in the way that the developers will implement this change. From past experience, they tend to look at indivdual ATs, and then power sets in that AT. I'll be generous and assume that they change a whole AT at once. This isn't likely from past updates...let's look into the future:

Issue 4 - Scrappers get rebalanced a bit. Some powergamers start to play Tanks. Some players quit.
Issue 5 - Tanks get nerfed to where they should be: Weaker than in Issue 3. Powergamers that played Tanks start to play Controllers. Enhancements are made more expensive. Many players quit.
Issue 6 - Controllers get nerfed in some way. Likely Pets. Powergamers that played Controllers start to play Defenders. Enhancements are made cheap again, but weakened. Some players quit.
Issue 7 - Defender debuffs are weaked signifigantly. Blasters get some sort of resistance avoidance for attack powers. Any Powergamers left start to play Blasters. Blasters have damage reduced slightly to compensate. CoH is now "balanced". Remaining players rejoice, I guess.

I would rather that Mobs start to use Defender powers, to replace some (useless) Controller powers. Oh, and Blasters get 10-25% more damage. That's one issue, and noone needs to get nerfed. But, I'm entitled to my own wrong opinion, so I guess this suggestion won't get far.

Happy playing!

Cool! I've discovered the source of the evil.

[ QUOTE ]
I think you and Scott are hung up on a misconception. I want the Invinc setting to be a death march for a veteran. I want to heroic to be challenging to a first time player. Challenging =/= death march. You two are fixated on this and hell bent on combining the two concepts into one idea that the entire game has to be a death march. A father and his 8 year old daughter should be able to log on and do heroic missions with risk and success.

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This is a good point; I misunderstood you. However, since the difference between Heroic and Invincible is, er, 2 levels... I think that making one a death march and one an easy challenge is going to be.. hard. That's some difficulty spread! Maybe a SuperPurplePatch would work?

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Games which offer no risk of failure are not games...they are by definition exercises. Scott says he likes the game because of the story arcs. This game would have failed the first day if all you did is go around and click on story arcs. This game would have failed the first month if the mobs couldn't kill you ..at all.

Risk v Reward

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I get it now. It took a it, and there were false starts, but I think I finally get it.

CoH is a passtime for me. Some people build little trains. Some people paint miniatures. Some people crochet.

I play CoH. I play to meet people, talk to people, check out the story arcs, and level up strange hero ideas. I really thrive on making ATs do things they just weren't meant to do (ex: FF Defender + Provoke = Tank)

Challenge just isn't in this equation. I'd argue it isn't for other people as well.

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Games that tap into that desire for self-improvement and ability to rise to a challenge are games that will be remembered..and more importantly, played.

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Good point for some people, I'm sure. I know there are people that are incapable of taking it easy - heck, I play a melee Blaster every once in a while. Relentless difficulty does add to a sense of accomplishment, sure.

You just need to keep in mind that the "feeling of accomplishment / feeling of pointlessness" theshold is different for everyone.

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A myopic view of nerfing. Scott, what happens when the devs make a mistake and make a power too powerful? They should just raise every single power/AT up to compensate. The idea that nerfing is NEVER an option is completely selfish and childish. THere are many posters who have the maturity to understand the need to tone things down. Nerfing....done right doesn't mean the nerf hurts all players universally

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Nerfing is always an option. It's even good in certain cases. The problem with nerfs is that, unlike the purple patch you mention, they are currently very specific, and that's bad.

Why? Because players have the opportunity to move to another character, that's still powerful in some way.

Nerfing individual powers causes opportunistic players of high knowledge/skill to move to the next "Build of the Month"...which causes that combination of powers to get looked at. People that already had an unoptimized version of that new "BotM" get weakened too. Surprise!

Since you've brought this up, let's look at how a "simple" change causes unintended upheaval. Let's imagine that the base resists for a Fire Tank are reduced by 10% because a lot of players in the know take Tough. Sounds reasonable at first glance.

What about the Fire Tank that doesn't take tough because they don't know about the power? They start dying and they don't know how or why.

What about the Fire Tank that doens't take Tough for roleplaying reasons? I guess they should drop a power and grab Tough? If they have a respec?

What about the Fire Tank who is built as a Scrapper and already has low defenses? Should that play style not be allowed?

The problem with nerfing individual powers because of a certain combination of powers is broken is that unoptimized builds become weaker than the devs intend.

If this game, say, came with a manual that actually listed what powers do, that would be one thing. But it doesn't.

Most players don't even have a board account, and the first thing they will notice from a change is the sudden death.

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The players after we get SO's are out of balance with the enemies we fact ...at least until lvl 37...per the devs design/vision. You agree the game can be too easy. How do they solve that?

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SO's would not be an issue if the enemies had a brain. Heck, that's not even needed. I've said it before, but I'll say it here again: if Mobs had Defenders on thier team the game would be much much harder without needing to nerf anyone. Forget about boosting mob hit points, forget about nerfing certain powers.

If a level 30-40 villain group had two members like Tsoo Sorcerers Invincible missions would be just that.

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Picking the solo class does not mean that soloing should be a walk through the park. Not picking the soloing class means that you should have a much more difficult time soloing. You're not supposed to be taking out even lvl bosses as blaster or defender or controller with nearly the efficicency or ease as a scrapper. And the scrapper isn't supposed to be able to do it reliable. Go read the devs posts since day one. You conveniently ignore this.

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You assuming that your ability to play is the same as everyone else's .....again.

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Yes it is. You play a game for the challenge...to overcome obstacles. Asking players to self-impose gimpness to enjoy your game is idiotic. It's like telling a right handed teninis player to play left handed so he'll be challenged by your AI. I'll just quit and go play a game that demands I bring all my skills and abilities to succeed. This is a very fundamental aspect of psychology DM. Failing to grasp this points means we can't have any meaningful discussion.


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Er, no. Your opinion that you like to be challenged is your opinion. That's a fact. I grasp what you like just fine, but I guess we can't have a meaningful discussion if your opinions are to be considered facts, because they aren't.

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I said the game is popular and enjoyed immensely as a result of the challenge people experience during the first 22 lvls.

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This isn't true for me. In fact, I'll bet a bunch of people feel differently from you. For example, I like the early levels for the neat story arcs. The challenge I could do without.

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DM, despite what you feel you should be able to do as a solo blaster, there is what the devs feel you should. The two don't match.

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Correct. The Devs have the "final say". This being a subscription game, however, the players' opinions matter more than you seem to think.

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Jesus man....Respec is supposed to be THE hardest mission at that point in your career. I was fighting +4's the WHOLE time...you know why I died? Only two of those deaths were actually in the Reactor mission...I was pulling for the team. Me, an /SR scrapper with ZERO AoE defense was Stealth/SS pulling +4 Assault bots. We had one person at lvl 28..the healer, and everyone else was below him...and you're going to tell me that the two deaths I suffered in the final run were too much?

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You admit to being insanely skilled at the game, and then wonder why you're not challenged?

Wow.

I guess we're all just as good as you and we all need to be "challenged" just like you do... I wish I knew I was that good earlier, but it's ok, you just told me I was. Whew!

OK, Mieux, I've finally managed to get some opinion out of you, and I don't like what I see...at all. This is why people say that communication causes more problems than it solves.

This is just awesome. Let's examine this post:

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You like challenge, then pick a class which, by definition of being best at soloing, needs no help. OF COURSE you got bored with your scrapper.

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I got bored with my scrapper after I got SO's. Before that I enjoyed her immensily.

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And you follow up this reasonable argument with this self-centered crap:

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Go do everything you can to challenge yourself before you come back here with nerf calls.

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Expecting players to self-nerf to be challenged is a fundamental flawed way to make a game. I think the devs know this.

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Uh, no. I do. Others do. No, it is you, Mieux, who is the player that is unwilling to self-nerf. That's nice. That's great that you're selfish. I normally couldn't care less.

But you're asking for global nerfing based on your experience with what you want.

I agree that the game is too easy for some people. I agree that it's not for others. I think that calling for nerfs helps no one and hurts everyone.

Show me that casual players won't leave if the game gets harder.
Show me that Tanks never solo, and therefore don't need offense.
Show me that Blasters can always get a team.

And if you can? We'll have an actual argument about where the balance line should be, where my opinion matters too.

Thanks.

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GS, you're overlooking a very important reality. The toons, the powers have to be balanced against the mobs. The reason they have "nerf" is because the game is too easy. The 30's game is too easy. You can't just keep upping people's powers. This is the fundamental disconnect everyone has when they piss and moan about "why not just bring the weaker sets up??!!!"

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Good point! The game is too easy. Actually, the game needs to be too easy, but that's a point for another post. In the here and now we'll discuss your valid point.

OK, let's assume that everyone is nerfed to the level of Blasters, and the game is a challenge for many people on Heroic.

Great! Except that CoH is not in Beta any more.

People have been playing CoH more than a year, in many cases, and people are used to how it plays. For lack of a better word, CoH has inertia. Why is this a problem? Well, the main issue is that people have a percieved power level (PPL!) for their toons now.

Now that they are familiar with the current PPL, they will choose to maintain it. How? Well, if the game keep getting more balanced / harder, the only good way to maintain the previous PPL is to PowerGame. That is, exploit every possible hole in the game by every and any means possible. That's mostly accomplished in CoH by "building" a custom hero using certain powers and slotting.

Players trying to hold on to the old PPL will make little Hero clones, and that is boring as dirt to me. I'm not going to get into the fact that the Arena is screwing around with PvE balance, and it's pointless to mention that people quit when the PPL goes down.

The fact that leveling will slow (a lot) is just extra joy.

Since I agree with you that the game needs to get harder in some way, I think that the Mobs need boosting. The Tsoo are a real challenge for many heroes in the early 20's. I think that a little power set makeover would go a long way to making the game a bigger challenge, without mass gimpage.

Oh, and to use your previous point about ATs, I think you're correct. Modifying one AT to be better (Blasters) is much simpler and quicker than modifying 3 downward (Tanks/Scrappers/Controllers).

I think you can get to 10% with Tough? Also, the Fire EPP has a gimpy version of Fire Shield that gives a bonus to S/L/F as well...

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But returning to tankers...yes...they are the show-stoppers. Their damage is so good...especially with Hasten...wannabe scrappers will resort to making Tankers instead.

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I kind of agree. Tank damage is really high for the defense they get. They'll probably get nerfed again....right after they got boosted. But not all Tank AT Heroes are "Tanks".

So you believe that I shouldn't be able to slot a Stone/Stone Tanks as a "regen scrapper"? Interesting.

I guess you don't think that cool concepts are a good thing. I've always kinda wanted to make a Elemental Scrapper, but you're right, for game balance purposes I guess I shouldn't be allowed to...

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The real problem is the primacy of damage. That's all this game amounts to in 90% of the missions. Give the other AT's a way to make xp that doesn't require damage and you will probably see less people slotting for damage.

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I agree completely. But we'll never see the SSOCS because we need to get the CoV Alpha, er meant Arena, sorry....balanced first.

But that can never happen, because the game was already balanced for PvE play only.

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If you are being serious:

People throw the "Well slot your powers with TO's then" argument around a lot. First off, any game that expects people to self-nerf for a challenge is doomed. That should be so obvious, you shouldn't have brough it up. Expecting people to self-nerf is ridiculous and a contemptous remark.

Secondly, as I've said before, you have to consider the effect on players when solo and when teamed...like teamed with some +2's so you're facing +5's. You can't sk in that situation. Obviously, tho, I don't expect the game to bend over backwards to deal with this...but..TF's are a different matter. TF's are probably seen as the crown jewel missions by the devs. These are the missions they spend the most time devising and probably play testing. As such, you need to consider the adversity players will face in this situation. This is the main reason why they should not nerf scrapper defense. Especially when they are testing the fights with inspirations....ridiculous. Nerf our damage....maybe raise our crit % by 5% so we are still boss killers.

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Quite serious, sadly. I agree that reducing the damage that Scrappers do by one brawl or so per attack (~20%) is a great idea in theory. In practice, this means game imbalance on a grand scale.

For example, under this solution, should Tanks continue to do identical damage to Scrappers (80% of Blasters), or should they be nerfed as well?

If not, why do scrappers exist?
If so, how would Tanks solo?

Oh, and railing aginst the hypocracy of the common CoH player exhibits exactly the kind of cynicism you say you hate so much... I know a lot of players who self-nerf, and I'm among them.

EDIT: I'm going to go on a mini-rant here, for clarity . CoH is unique among MMO's - the game doesn't set the difficulty level, the players do.

This means that between the slotting system and the difficulty slider, min/maxxed Heroes and gimpy Heroes can team together and co-exist in the game, without really affecting each other.

Suggestions like 'Nerf That Power, It's Too Good' really boil down to 'Someone Is More Powerful Than Me, and I Got Envy'. There really isn't any excuse for nerf-herding - PvE play simply does not give players any valid reason to care.

All that Balancing does is push players into more and more similar builds, and allow less of a 'power level spread' that this game so desperately needs to keep.

So sure, give Blasters a damage boost so that they are equal in effectiveness to Scrappers, don't nerf Scrappers. Or Balance everyone into a sea of conformity. As long as one power is even slighty 'better' than any other, there will be The Build that everyone Must Respec Into. And that's a bad thing. Over Powered Abilities = More Choice.

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See, by not nerfing the two scrapper sets that could blow up at high lvl, they had to boost tanker damage. Now it's out of control. They'll never take Tankers alive.

Personally, I have no problem if they nerf our damage by 20%. I think they should leave our defenses (but not Perma-X) and nerf scrapper/tanker damage instead (even nerf Def dmg too). This way we can continue to hold aggro, and be happy we have trigger-happy blasters on the team.

I'd take the nerf in a heart beat. The slider only goes to Invinc..I can't turn it any higher. Defense is not what allows me to solo at that lvl.


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That's great! It's good to hear that you're ok with a Scrapper nerf. That's a brave admission, and I can tell that you care about game balance.

One question, though: when did you get permission to nerf all my Heroes too? I'd kinda rather you slotted TOs in all your powers; I must have missed the part where you decided my game should get harder?

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I agree with Statesman in his comment that the role of the Blaster is to attack targets from range. Statesmans comment about range being an advantage to blasters can be realized I think by some fairly simple changes I think.

So what needs to be done is to emphasise the ranged attacks while downplaying the melee attacks without reducing their support functions. How do we do this?


Increase the damage of Ranged attacks, reduce the damage of melee

Increase the status effects of the melee attacks in secondaries, i.e. stuns, knockback etc.

Gradually increase the range of ranged attacks in the same manner that Fly increases in speed.

Tweak some of the specific powers.

Leave Defense, damage resistance, mez resistance alone

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I agree with a lot of this. I think you missed the reason that Melee attacks do so much damage, though. I definitely disagree that they should be reduced.

Here's the formula that you're missing: Risk (should) Equal Reward.
Melee is a Risk for Blasters, so the Reward is Awesome Melee Damage.

I agree with everything else, I still believe that all that is wrong with the Blaster AT is about 2 brawls of extra damage per attack.

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The end result is that even though scrapper and blaster attacks are very comparable on a one for one basis (as they should be IMO) once you get to higher levels and can slot up those extra attacks scrappers end up with a superior attack chain and do more damage as a result. This is true even before critical hits and damage caps some into play.

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I guess this is where I disagree with you, a little. It's nice to get a reasonable debate going, but I thought that the numbers "spoke for themselves". I guess they didn't, so I'll speak for them...

The fact that Scrapper attacks are directly comparable to Blaster attacks show that something is desperately wrong.

Blasters sacrifice all protection for offense! There should not be many cases where thier base damage is the same as another AT's attack.

For example, if Zapp did 9.889 Brawls of damage, it would be doing about the same damage as Total Focus......but it doesn't. It should! I'm not even going to get into the fact that we're comparing a Blaster set to MA, which many players believe to be "gimp"...

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Odd how you considered the recharge and animation on Zapp, but ignored the fact that the other three attacks for MA also have faster animation and recharges (except BL which does DoT).

Your number show why people would think blasters do more damage, but leaves out the things that show they do less.

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You're correct; I could go on all day. I could talk about how Blaster attacks are more endurance efficient, I could talk about the fact that one set has Range, and Range is a (small) advantage. I could talk about how the secondaries affect the primarys, and so forth.

The only point I was trying to make is that the difference between Scrapper and Blaster attacks are very small, and that most of the differences balance out.

If you tell the average Blaster, "Hey, you've got no defenses, but at least you can do Scrapper damage from 80 yards away!" they'd get offended and scream bloody murder...

The numbers, though, say exactly that, loud and clear.

Guys, this isn't some magical mystery tour. We all know the numbers. It's been confirmed that Blaster and Scrapper base damage is the same.

Here's two single target damage sets. Both get Build Up, both set a low end single target, a medium AoE, and a high end single target.

Let's look!

Lightning Bolt - 4.5556 Brawls / Crane Kick - 4.5556 Brawls
Ball Lightning - 2.8333 Brawls / Dragon's Tail - 2.7778 Brawls
Zapp - 7.6667 Brawls / Eagle's Claw - 5.5556 Brawls

Taking into account Zapp's recharge rate and activation time, they sure look like equivalent damage to me....

This is not an arguable topic (although I'm sure someone will try ). The only difference between Blaster Ranged attacks and Scrapper Melee attacks is .... how they are slotted.

Blaster Melee attacks actually do more damage than Scrapper attacks do, which is one of the reasons I take and use them...to actually do my job in a team, the job of Hurting Things More Than Most Other People.

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With the correct power selection controllers can do ok, which is exactly what I said.

Neither is really at any risk; however the controller will simply will not keep up to a scrapper over that stretch because they do significantly less damage. While the controller is using dominate and mesmerize the scrapper can be using shadow maul and smite. These are a no contest win for the scrapper.

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Uhm, with all due respect, you run Vahz missions at 5th level, right? Zombie Puke = Dead Scrapper/Tank.

Ranged Heroes, especially ones with mez attacks, do just fine....

Warning: I'm going to be obnoxious now. Skip this post if you don't like anyone to state the obvious.

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Currently, apart from Devices, those secondaries have anywhere from four melee attacks to seven melee attacks. Ditch some of 'em. Blappers will likely complain, but odds are they should be playing Scrappers instead if they want to melee.

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Niiiice! Let me get this straight: you're saying all Blappers should roll up Scrappers. I agree.

When You Get the Devs to Create a [censored] Elemental Scrapper Set There Won't Be Any More "Blappers"

You let me know when that's done, and I'll stop making melee Blaster, ok?

Thanks.

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Are you serious? There is no way a controller solos as well as a scrapper from level 1-10. Furthermore we were treated to 9 whole months of incessant scrapper whining, despite the fact they were already vastly superior to every other AT.

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He's serious. Go roll up a Mind Controller some time.

It's called Dominate/Mesmerize. 2 differnet ranged, 10+ damage attacks.
Oh, and perma-sleep. I arrested Hellions all afternoon.

Sure, the damage doesn't scale, and yes, the teens will suck, but from 1-9th or so you'll do Scrapper damage with less risk.

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equivalent to the capability of Scrapper

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This is my issue Scott. What do scrappers have to do with blasters? This whole AT envy situation is nonsense. The problem that blasters should complain about it that missions don't confer enough advantage for Ranged damage.

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AT envy? Not at all. Scrappers are simply a convenient yardstick to use. We're talking about Melee damage vs Ranged damage.

The reason for my comparison is that the "Ability to Do Damage vs The Lack of Defense" equation is entirely out of whack. Blaster's don't do enough damage to compensate for thier lack of defenses. I don't want them to have more defenses; that would remove flavor from the game.

I want Blaster attacks (primaries in particular) to have about 2 brawls more of base damage.

It's a boost, sure. Game imbalance? Very little. Range would still fail to be more than slightly helpful, and status attacks would still have full effect. The chance to one-shot lieutenants without using a Inspiration, Build-Up, or Nuke would make the AT more survivable solo.....which is the real issue here.

Teaming problems and intra-AT comparisons are really not relevant.

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I want to say this to the entire blaster community: scrappers have nothing negative to say about blasters. Scrappers are not asking to be more powerful.

What we are asking for is For Regen to be left Uber.

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You had a few spelling mistakes there, fixed 'em for ya.

I'm sure that Kali-Mag will agree with me that us Dark Armor scrappers are still waiting on the Devs to finish "looking at us". Same with SR, not EVERY SuperReflexes scrapper wants to dedicate all of their Slotting to defense toggles that pale so harshly in comparison to their L 38 power which is garnering them quite a bit of hate as well where PvP is concerend.

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This post is why I'm so glad that I asked for Dev attention to go to Blasters in the Regen threads.

It's good to see that nerf-herding isn't a lost art!