Miladys_Knight

Inspiration cascade will be your friend. As long as your tray has about 8 open spots when you nuke at the target cap it should fill you all the way back up.

It's also worth noting that Blackstar from Dark/ has -35% enemy to hit debuff that lasts for 20 seconds and will actually work on the stuff that it hits that survives the nuke. All you need is 10% defense to all positions and you should be relatively safe until you can recover again if you happen to hit less than 7 targets with DP.

Hmmm might have to do a 2nd build for my Dark/Mental/Elec and go with Dark/Mental/Fire......

Lol, was just getting ready to post that and saw you beat me to it.

For a quick snap shot, check your friends list. Typically about 1/2 of my friends are solo while the rest are in teams that average about 4 members.

My friends on Freedom are teamed more often than solo. My friends on Triumph are solo more often than teamed. My friends on Justice are split about evenly between solo and teamed.

That's calling the strawman yellow. Any needed fixes for soloing will be just as valuable while teamed. What you really want is for the blaster to be a damage deity and AT balance is getting in the way of your desire.

The -recovery value in Inferno and Nova is -1000%. With ED capped recovery in Drain Psyche you need to hit 7 or more targets to negate the crash. Which is doable though not optimal.

If you decide to go with a secondary other than /Mental may I suggest /Elec? Power sink has a base recharge of 60 seconds and is autohit. With ED capped end mod slotting you only need 2 targets to completely refill your blue bar even discounting the Catch a Breath that you had to pop post nuke to get enough end to activate Power Sink.

Edit - also don't forget to include Burn Out in your plans. You can nuke, die, RotP, burnout, and nuke again.

Edit Edit - I just got the chills looking at mids. Sonic/Elec/Fire. Open with Sirens > Char on a boss > Shocking Grasp on that boss for lock down > Screech on any other boss that may be there > Amplify > Build up > Dreadful Wail. Anything that survives will be stunned or still asleep and Power Sink won't wake them up or unstun them.

/e starts planning his own Sonic/Elec/Fire/Burnout nuke monster.

I do say. It's trying to convince the people that say, "well, mine don't." That they are the exception and not the rule.

To quote someone, "This just seems selfish."

Actually I want blasters to be able to both solo and team effectively. On a well balanced team they do "ok", solo they don't have the tools. Giving them the tools to solo isn't going to harm them on a team. Since not all players play on high pop servers, or live in time zones where teaming is convenient, this is the item that should get the highest priority since it is the very reason that blasters are no longer the kings of damage. The other "non-soloable" ATs have been given the tools to solo (in their case it was damage) and marginalized the blaster.

I used to feel that way too but several things have demonstrated to me that it's not the case any more:

• CoV and the release of the "self reliant" "villain" ATs.
• The solo-ability buffs all "hero" ATs except blasters were given.
• PvP changes that took the focus of PvP away from team tactics and base raiding and turned it to solo tactics and zone play.

I can't really agree that this is "primarily" a multiplayer game anymore since (with the addition of the new DA content) you can do practically every thing and earn almost all available awards by soloing. The only things that come to mind that you have to have help with is a few simul-click glowie missions, TF commander accolade, and the SG base beacon for RWZ (which kind of flies in the face of having an SG in the first place). I was going to say Hami-Os but the market lets you get those without ever doing a Hami raid, STF or RSF and there are players soloing the STF and the RSF in any case. There are even people that can, with the advent of incarnate powers, solo all the pylons in the RWZ before they regenerate and drop the shields on the ship so they could get the beacon.

I have personal data that I posted in the thread in the AT and powers section that shows that my blasters spend a much higher proportion of their time mezzed than any other AT I play. I may be alone in that but I highly doubt it, especially since Arcanaville says that the devs have data that confirms that pretty much across the player base for the blaster AT. So its not really selfish, its not really conjecture, but it isn't going to convince anyone that simply lives in denial and isn't willing to check the facts out for themselves. It is probable that this is the root cause of blaster under performance and is why I've chosen focus on that aspect rather than the damage aspect.

Throwing more damage at a blaster has about as much chance of fixing blasters as jogging through New York's Central Park at night has of improving your overall health.

And I don't want damage instead of survivability buffs. The blaster needs the survivability buffs to function properly in the current game. If your house is falling apart and looks like crap, spending a bunch of money redecorating isn't going to fix the roof, replace the windows, and insulate. Sure it will look pretty but the first strong gust of wind to come along gives you the same problem all over again and you've wasted the resources that should have been spent making the repairs on cosmetics.

If you are advocating fixing the roof, windows, and insulation first and then putting a nice coat of paint on the house and planting daisies out front if there are any resources left I am in complete agreement.

What if the devs aren't willing to have the damage scale exceed 10 or even retool the scale to make the blaster the only 10 in the game and the nearest other AT a 9? Even if they take the blaster to a 4 in survivability in that case it still isn't going to be enough to fix the issues and it still won't be comparable to all the other ATs.

If a tall structure is unstable you can't make it more stable by adding height to it. You have to broaden the base or increase the structural support first. That's the priority and it should be where our attention is focused.

That's because numerically they don't. Blaster don't out damage them and don't have anything to make up for it.

So what do you do when you admit that a blaster hasn't really ever had a functional core concept? At this stage in the game they most certainly don't. Their role of "damage king" (a canard by the way. Damage king has always pretty much been lip service in describing them, part of that has to do with the ZOMG no tank mage business) has been usurped by most of the other ATs so that those other ATs can solo reasonably well. The blaster all ready had enough damage to solo, what they lacked was mitigation.

Glass cannon. That gets bandied about so much that I am quite frankly sick of it. The entire idea is absurd. NO one would ever cast a serious cannon out of glass. It's not even reasonable think of it that way. Besides which, who ever heard of a cannon being locked into place by a wussy little ring of fire? What cannon isn't going to fire if you put ice around the outside? What chance does a mind control ray have of putting out the fuse and stopping the cannon from going boom? Contrary to the bugs bunny cartoons, sticking your finger in the barrel of a gun doesn't prevent it from going off nor does it make the gun explode.

You know what adding damage to it makes it? A glass howitzer. You know what the problem is? It's still made of freaking glass!

Glass cannon goes hand in hand with the other equally false platitude of range = defense. Range only equals defense if you have a ranged advantage. The blaster doesn't have that advantage, the mobs do. The blaster can't even keep the mobs at range to preserve that fictitious advantage. Only Dark Blast and blaster PPPs have the tools to attempt that, they are both fairly new additions, and they don't have enough range in those powers (excepting Mace mastery) to succeed.

The other famously ridiculous thing is Jack and the "just ask the defender not to heal you" stupidity of D1.0.

The real problem is that the devs can't come up with a working core concept for blasters because the cannon you can break easily is not a cannon, it's cannon fodder.

The other metaphor that I really need to bring into the discussion is this.

The tanker AT used to be a Bradley Armored Fighting Vehicle - now it's an M1 Abrams.
The scrapper used to be the 2000 pound bomb - now its a 2 megaton nuclear warhead.
The controller used to be a tax collector - now it's the entire IRS with the secret service and US Marshalls thrown in gratis.
The defender used to be a shield wall and blood letters - now it's the patriot missile system, MRIs and micro surgery.
The blaster is still a cannon.... and it's not even cast out of Bronze or Iron.

Except that you just said that they need increases in both. In actual fact blasters have enough damage to solo effectively since other ATs that have less can do so. The blaster lacks the ability to continue to apply that damage which is why they fail.

This should concern me why? I pay to play VIP. I'm not getting VIP service where my blasters are concerned. I play this game for fun and to escape the pressures of the daily grind of work and the economy.

You know what isn't fun? Being defeated. Repeatedly. Especially if you equate it to losing as I do. Being defeated on this AT more than any other AT. Having to repay more debt than any other AT I play. Having to return from the hospital more than any other AT I play. Having to stand there stunned, held or slept more often than any other AT and and for longer than any other AT and not having the tools to prevent it proactively or fix it reactively in my powerset. Being able to use 3 powers while mezzed when all the other ATs I play get to use all of them because they rarely get mezzed in the first place.

Notice that nothing in the unfun list has anything to do with lacking damage. I think that it is a pretty reasonable conclusion that adding a little damage or even a moderate amount of damage isn't going to solve any of the not fun issues. Especially when mez and defeat prevent you from using increased damage. It might reduce the issues slightly but it can't solve them.

I can just about guarantee you that getting the amount of damage buff required to fix the problem is FAR more than the devs will ever consider giving to the blaster. You CAN'T balance low survivability with high damage. This game has spent years failing to do so. The fulcrum is just too far from the center of the lever. The weight you would have to add to the short side to achieve it is too much.

The best I can see the devs doing is making ranged 1.25 and melee 1.125. That would be spitting in the wind.

Except that a damage buff won't make up for the lack of survivability.

Blaster dead and boss at 2/3s health or blaster dead and boss at half health instead. The problem is still blaster dead. I don't care one way or the other if the devs give blasters enough of a damage buff to put them head of scrappers. What I do care about is getting the blaster enough mitigation and mez protection to adequately use the damage they all ready have.

I'm of the opinion that most of the people that think blaster damage is too low spend most of their time mezzed or dead. The former reduces damage output to a pittance (especially in comparison) and the later reduces damage output to 0.

I just want to be able to use the damage I all ready have continuously just like all the other damage ATs get to do. I think I have enough damage as a blaster if I don't have to pop a rescue power, "bravely" run away, hoard purple insps and break frees instead of converting them to reds, or waste tine returning from the hospital.

What I'm arguing is, that if blasters get a survivability boost. they may not NEED a damage boost. I could do it with mez protection alone. I know that from having Clarion on a couple of blasters. I don't know if that is enough to help the average blaster player but I know that it would make the difference for me and by extrapolation for any other players like me.

Except that the logic doesn't follow because you are only looking at the damage side of the issue. It isn't that other arch types do comparable damage to blasters. It's that they do that damage with MUCH higher personal mitigation.

Except that I don't believe the devs will bring up blaster damage to the level required to give damage based mitigation.

I know what point my survivability changes from adding raw damage. It's the point where I have 3 or more small red insps active and some of that (perhaps even much of that) comes from the faster rate of receiving insp drops by killing quicker. I can't see the devs buffing blaster damage by 75%.

Mob hit points by rank usually increase in a regular progression. ie: a minion has 500, a lieutenant 1000, and a boss 1500 for example.

BUT they also con in a linear progression. So in one spawn the minions may all be white, the lieutenants will be yellow, and the bosses orange. That means that rank also applies the purple patch which means that progression isn't linear anymore. It might take 3 shots to kill a minion but instead of the 6 you would expect to need to kill a lieutenant it takes 7 and instead of the 9 you might expect it to take to kill a boss it takes 11.

Another thing that also isn't being taken into account in your reckoning is that higher hit points totals means that when a higher ranking mob gets a tick of regen it heals for more HP. That can up the required number of shots by another one based on rank especially if the animation times of your chosen power set are lengthier than a more optimal power set.

You have also forgotten to account for higher ranking mobs having a larger selection of powers. They do more damage per unit time and are more likely to have mitigation powers and ALL mobs that are ranked boss and higher are essentially immune to a single application of what ever hard control a blaster may have available.

There are several boss types in the game that have the ability to 2 shot a SOd blaster in melee range and some of those powers have the chance to apply a deleterious secondary effect to the blaster, like mez, further reducing the blaster's ability to survive and sharply curtailing what attacks that can be used and how much damage output the blaster has. Most blasters can't exchange blow for blow and expect to live.

This is the main reason that I believe blasters should have dependable mez protection either as part of their inherent or part of their secondary (or better yet in both)

Problem with your reasoning is that mob damage output is binary. If the mob is still alive even by 1 HP it still does full damage.

To buff blaster survivability with damage output you need to increase damage out put in such a way that it takes 1 less shot to defeat EACH mob 100% of the time. If a 25% buff to damage doesn't reduce number of shots required it looks like a buff but doesn't function that way since it still allows the mobs to put out the same amount of damage in the same time which is still going to kill the blaster before the blaster can kill the spawn. (Teamed is a different situation since there are other ATs playing with differing damage outputs.)

The amount of damage buffing required to get to that point is high enough that the devs probably won't even consider that as an option. That's what I mean by glass ceiling, the devs won't promote blaster damage high enough to increase survivability with damage, because it looks too high (and is too high when you switch to a teaming situation).

The next option would be to reduce the time that it takes the blaster to cast the number of shots required to defeat a MOB. It would have to happen in such a way that the blaster can cast the required number of attacks fast enough to reduce the number of attacks the mobs get to use by 1. That means speeding up all the animations of all the powers in all the blaster sets while keeping the animation times the same for all other AT that share the powers. That is far too much dev time and probably won't fly because of the way that might affect the other ATs.

That leaves reducing the amount of incoming damage and mez that hit a blaster. Traditionally the way to do that is by adding resistances, defense, and mez protection something the dev mind set is against and lots of the player base too with the ZOMG, no tank mages, BS that gets spouted all the time.

That leaves us looking for a solution by creating a 4th option since the first 3 are off the table.

It was right after Rad came out for blasters. Burn was still broken and to be honest I haven't checked the numbers on it since it got fixed.

At first It wasn't possible to go red side to get a PPP. Back then my attack chain was Neutron Bomb > Aim + Build Up while moving in > Irradiate > Combustion as they were swarming me to give it time to inflict its DoT and then FSC as they were starting to spread out.

When I respecd I took only PBAoEs on this blaster (even my judgement power. I went with Void). I target a boss. Web Envelope > Ring of Fire > Aim + Build Up while jumping in the middle > Irradiate (it has an Achilles heel Proc) Burn > FCS > Combustion. I go from smallest radius attack to largest now to try to maximize damage. The ones i miss with Web envelope are trying to get away but are still in the radius of each consecutive attack. Single target attacks or a couple more ticks from Hot Feet finish off what little of the spawn is usually left.

I was actually thinking of suggesting that. Would make thematic sense that they take longer to get up because they are woozy, battered and bruised.

It used to boost KB magnitude.......

On my list of mez durations compared to patrol hours my character that has the highest mez length is an Energy/Elec/Fire named Fusion Debt. Energy Torrent, Explosive Blast, Thunderstrike, Lightning Clap, and Bonfire are all slotted FOR KB (each is 6 slotted with Kinetic Crash). The reason her %s of being mezzed are so high is because she survives while mezzed longer than any of my other blasters because she is hovering over Bonfire.

She's still vulnerable to taking too much damage over time and all mez does is reduces her kill speed (and therefore her offensive mitigation) so she spends more time alive but mezzed and doesn't suffer a hit point crash as fast as the others.

It actually works fairly well because her mitigation (Bonfire) remains intact even while mezzed which is pretty unique in blasterdom.

Lightning should be.... but its not.

Additionally the Avoid in Hot feet means that Blazing Aura is only going to do 1 tic of damage, if that, before the mobs leave melee range.

I checked with Hero stats on a Fire/Fire Dom and on my Rad/Fire blaster. Hot feet and Combustion do the lions share of damage at 4 player's worth of mobs and higher (My guess is due to the radius), followed closely by FSC. Blazing Aura is absolutely pathetic with Hot Feet running and merely "low" with Hot Feet off.

I'd recommend going red side to get mace mastery. You can pick up Scorpion shield which is much better than Frozen Armor and you get Web Envelope which you could slot with the Enfeebled Operation set instead of Ring of Fire. Web Envelope is a TAoE immob. It has 20 second base recharge and a range of 80 feet. You can really leverage Hot Feet, FSC, Combustion, and Burn with that power.

I actually tried this in my Sonic/Ice blaster. I had the EC chance for heal in Shriek, Scream, and Shout. I also had the Sandman chance for heal in Sirens and in Frozen Aura (It checks per target in those powers and can proc multiple times per cast). Even in this most extreme case Aid Self was measurably better and I switched all the healing procs out when I respec'd.

I use it on adds before they arrive in the carnage zone. It doesn't get used often but it has a purple sleep set in it to make up for that.

I ran the calculations on it once. If you slot it in your tier 1 attack and fire it every 4 seconds for a minute it will proc an average of 1.5 times and heal you for about 90 health total. With base hit points for a blaster that's equivalent to 7% regeneration BUT if you have the plus HP accolades and a truer idea of how often you fire your tier 1 it works out to about .75 procs per minute.

That's 45 HP out of 1445 in a minute or about the equivalent of 3% more regen at the cost of a power slot. (ie: definitely not worth it). One thing worth noting though is that blasters can fire their tier 1 and 2 primary and their tier 1 secondary while mezzed. Sleep is a relatively common Mob mez power and sleeps break when the player is damaged, healed, or moved out of position. Since the EC proc is a heal and not regen it will occasionally fire and break a blaster out of sleep. The times that occurs is still relatively low and leaves the proc in the not really worth it range.

Not really, there is a glass ceiling for damage. Blasters are near it. Getting enough damage to make up for the lack of survivability would push us far over that ceiling. The amount of damage required to give the survivability comparable to other ATs would mean that we'd be one shotting minions, 2 shotting lieutenants, and 3 shotting Bosses.

The problem can't be solved by increasing blaster damage without breaking the game. That means that other things are needed instead.