Miladys_Knight

Settings below x4 are too low for inspiration cascade as you use inspires faster than they drop. Sets that lack AoE damage like Psi/ and Elec/ do not even have the opportunity to start an inspiration cascade unless they are paired with a much riskier AoE heavy secondary like /Fire.

If you know how to use an inspiration cascade your blaster is much better off at a setting of +0/x6 than +0/X3. That may be one point that doesn't make sense but if you slot some defense set bonuses you can use fewer inspires and that lets you smooth out the cascade somewhat.

If you have never tried it and your blaster has decent AoE I'd recommend experimenting with it. Set your difficulty to -1/x5, no bosses, no AVs and select a low mez opponent like Family, Council, or Cimerorans. Enter the mission, pop 4 small purple inspires and fight like crazy. If you have enough AoE damage you should be able to wipe out minions with your AoE and finish off lieutenants with single target attacks and combine up inspires as you go so that next spawn you have 4 more small purples ready to mitigate the alpha response with.

You can create a Kinetic Dampener temp power and pick up the Wedding Band temp from Striga Island. These can get you over a hump if you didn't get enough of the right kind of insps to combine.

The energy blaster "can" do it with a defiance buff + Assault + Aim + Build up + Total Focus. If they have a few damage set bonuses and provided they live through the animation time of all that.

Actually it is called Villain Monologue and any thing Boss level and higher should use it.

(You know where they stop attacking and all the blasters best powers get to recharge, the blaster gets to regen and recover while the villain stands there and chats the blaster up about how they are going to rule the world as soon as they dispatch the puny blaster yadda, yadda, yadda. It should have been cut scenes but alas no such luck.)

Except that its not all that easy to hit an MI with web grenade because they phase and it requires that you stand in the mine patch as "bait" until they phase in. I merely mention it for those that don't know that the RUN step is not required if you use the tools available (few though they may be).

A blaster has only a 1 wood and a putter to his name. They might be able to cobble a bent 5 iron out of pool powers, a cheap pitching wedge with a loose head out of really expensive IOS, and a caddy out of incarnate powers, but that's about the extent of it.

They need to add up to something scary. I found that it didn't really make much difference (barring misses) to add small amounts of damage bonuses. What you have to have was enough of a damage boost to reduce the number of shots required to finish a mob by 1.

For most of the blaster combinations I have played that's in the 30ish to 40ish% range.

My general rule of thumb since that time has been:

If I consistently have lots of stuff with slivers of health left after my alpha I'll slot a few damage bonuses otherwise I focus on other things.

Carnie Illusionists and MIs fly. They (and CoT Ghosts) fly just high enough in the air to go over mines without triggering them. Carnie Illusionists (both types) also don't detonate mines when phased. All you have to do to make the mines work every time is to hit them with a web grenade when they aren't phased and when they finally phase in over the mines, BOOM.

Mag 4 steps on controller toes. I would be surprised if it ever happens since we lost the one mag 4 control tool we ever had at least partly for that reason.

I've always thought that the tier 1 secondary power should be a range 80 mag 4 immobilize yet..... here we are still mag 3 and all over the place with respec to range, projectile speed, and animation time.

In all honesty, where I13 PvP is concerned, this is plain truth. They put together a broken system, they were told it was broken by the community they were supposedly serving with the change, and they mulishly stuck to and saw that dreck through to completion.

I've seen them purposely put together complicated and/or gimmicky solutions to simple problems for the purpose of "different" and I was then unsurprised that they failed to solve the problem or were buggy as an ant hill.

On the flip side we have now a different crop of devs so I'm taking a wait and see attitude on any upcoming blaster changes and I'll decide how I feel then, after I take those changes for a spin. As far as I can tell this crop of devs is 1 for 2. Stalker changes were good. Grav changes were a lot of dev time for not so much improvement,

Ok Team today's mission is to shingle a roof. Tank, scrapper, defender, and controller here are your tool boxes, nails, and shingles. Sorry blaster we ran out of stuff while we were getting ready for you. I do have some good news though. You can use my crowbar for a tool, the rest of the guys will share their left over shingles, and you can have all the bent nails you want.

Blasters don't have all the tools needed to overcome many of the challenges they face in the game. That a tiny handful of blasters have figured out how to shingle a roof well under such conditions is amazing.

That the players that have done so insist that EVERYONE else continue to suffer through that is appalling.

Mechanics "should" be similar enough that changing zones does not change the play experience. That's pretty plain and simple.

This is a tough one since its too easy for 2 players or 2 teams to agree to game the system and then PvP turns into farming for ultra-rare PvP loot. (Which is exactly what happened when they added PvP loot to the game.)


Base raiding solves the problem. When I base raided our SG was one that valued honor and respect. Post raid comments were required by our SG leader to fall into one of 2 categories. They had to be self critical and/or opponent complimentary.

Comments of this sort were allowed, "Fluffy the Bunny really kicked my butt hard when I was defending the pylon I dropped in the Teleport room WTG Fluffy!"

We only raided with SGs that had similar standards. Our SG leader would ask the opposing SG not to allow players with poor attitudes to join the next raid and if they didn't comply with that request we didn't invite that SG to base raid with us any more.

We never lacked for challengers and had at least 1 raid a week end, every week end, if not more.

My suggestion to solve the base raid issue would be to add a "door" or "room" to the main SG that allowed the players into a "danger room" base below the main base that uses the old pathing rules specifically for base raiding.

I kind of worry that it's not worth the development time as we lack a PvP community precisely because of the issues that have been mentioned here.

I like Arch/Nrg/??

Thunder Strikes in the single target blasts (Snap Shot, Aimed Shot, Blazing Arrow, and Ranged Shot)
Blaster ATO in Explosive Arrow
Gaussians set in Build up
Combat Jumping with 2 pieces of Blessing of the Zephyr
Hover with 2 pieces of Blessing of the Zephyr
Flight with 2 pieces of Blessing of the Zephyr
Tough with 3 pieces of Reactive Armor and a Steadfast Res/Def
Weave with 3 LotG pieces (+rech, Def, and Def/End)
Maneuvers with 3 LotG pieces (+rech, Def, and Def/End)
Makos in Power Thrust

That can get you to the ranged soft cap without expensive PvP IOs.

Blasters have no close kin. They are the ONLY AT that is Damage/Damage. Any control they have is minor in comparison as are Buffs and Debuffs. Many people compare to scrappers simply because the blaster secondaries resembled at least partial ports of scrapper primaries.

All of the ATs you listed above have infringed on the blaster not the other way around. They have all been given what the blaster had all along and nothing was given to the blaster in compensation. It put ATs that had comparable performance ahead of the blaster and ATs that were all ready ahead even farther ahead. That's why the blaster underperforms all other ATs in the first place.

The devs keep adding mez to the game because they want us to be in jeopardy. Except that mez is not a real threat to any other AT in the game because they either have enough mez protection to ignore it or enough control/debuff to avoid it. ATs that are primarily buffers have no need to eat an alpha, or draw aggro, or have mez protection in their power set. None of that is true for the blaster.

Why do people insist that the blaster give up any thing? Most people don't insist that people in poverty pay anything to get a welfare check. Why do they insist that the most disadvantaged AT in the game give something up to be brought up to average performance levels?

I've long been a proponent of the blaster inherent being a simple *offensive toggle that while toggled on gives a 25% boost to damage and recovery and while toggled off gives mag 4 (or more) mez protection and 25% more regen.

Those players that insist blasters need more damage to be the kings of damage and say that they are never mezzed get what they want since they get enough damage to make them kings of damage again and if mez is not an issue for them as they claim will never have it detoggle and never notice the mez protection.

Those players that insist that mez is the issue can leave it toggled off it would also provide the right kind of benefit to switch between a team when mezzing aggro is spread around an bit more and solo when the blaster eats it all.

An easy fix that addresses all concerns on both sides of the fence without changing the blaster much at all.

*it should be coded as an offensive toggle so that if the blaster is mezzed the toggle drops and the mez protection kicks in immediately.

I'd say no. Solo it isn't too bad as no one else is along to break the sleep.

I have a Sonic/Ice/Elec and the issues are the usual ones for the blaster. Alpha response and Mez.

Sonic "could" be better if the widths and ranges on the cones were a bit more synergistic.

One thing I will mention is that the "stun bug" is an advantage here. If you hit a sleeping mob with screech he comes charging at you full steam fully stunned and any melee attacks make short work of him while keeping the rest of the sleeping spawn at range.

Mea culpa again. Let me rephrase a bit and I'll also note that several posters down stream have answered several of these questions.

According to the devs, mez protection is usually provided to those ATs designed to be in melee range. It was given to Tanks, Scrappers, Stalkers, Brutes, and part time to Dominators who were designed to spend at least part of their time in melee.

Look at the blaster secondary.... Mostly melee. Looks to me like the blaster was designed to spend about 1/2 their time in melee range yet they are the ONLY basic AT so designed that was passed over for mez protection. Blasters SHOULD have either half strength or half time mez protection by game design. They do not.

I have 1 blaster built specifically to solo +4/x8. It usually solos at +3/x8. It is a rad/fire/mace that is loaded to the gills with IO defense set bonuses (soft capped S/L, high energy, which also translates by the way to High Melee defense and High Ranged defense which is also important), has all the +HP accolades, level shifts from incarnate powers, and the incarnate powers themselves.

Clarion is the important one here since I allows me to keep Hot Feet toggled on. This has a 4 fold effect.

1) I do not lose the damage that Hot Feet puts out (which is considerable)
2) I do not lost the mitigation from the avoid and the slow in Hot Feet both of which are still important. If I did not have Hot Feet or I left it off I would not be able to survive +4/x8 as even soft capped defenses would not be enough to keep me alive on that setting.
3) It allows me to use my full damage output 100% of the time. I can put out Nova levels of damage in 20 seconds (and every 20 seconds) without a crash.
4) This allows me to Cascade inspirations when facing spawns that are not S/L/E focused. A small purple (or 2 when facing defense debuffers) brings my Melee and Ranged defense upto (or near enough) the soft cap against non-S/L/E foes (I'm still screwed vs stuff that favors AoE and non-S/L/E damage fortunately there are not that many mob types that fall into this category)

Prior to level 50, complete IO sets, and Incarnate Powers the best that I could reasonably do with this toon was about +1/x6. I relied almost exclusively on inspiration cascade. I had to have 1-2 purples per spawn and 1 break free per spawn to maintain the cascade. The purples lasted 60 seconds and would work across 2 spawns the break free lasted 1 spawn.

Freem players get neither IOs nor incarnates, some Preems can have IOs none of them can have Incarnate powers. A good chunk of the Freems are new players that would not have the knowledge of how the game works to even attempt +1/x6. I therefore do not consider +4/x8 any kind of standard simply because "I" have the knowledge to achieve it on a toon specially designed to do so.

You can disagree if you want but the fact is that in the I5 era MOST mob types had no mezzes for minions, lieutenants would have a ranged mez or 2 and Bosses would have short duration melee range mezzes associated with high damage powers.

The revamp to the Rikti gave "chance of mez" ranged attacks to minions, ranged mezzes to the lieutenants, and even ranged mezzes to certain Boss level mobs. Some of the rikti could use their ranged mezzes from ranges that are farther than the base range of Blaster tier 1 and 2 primary and far further than the tier 1 secondary.

I23 as an example has Knives of Vengeance. Virtually ALL of the mobs in this group have a mezzing power that can be used at range. A few of them even out range the blaster.

New Banished Pantheon have multiple ranged debuffs, multiple ranged mezzes, and many more of them out range the blaster. I have been killed several times by new BP while mezzed because they out range me and even though I can trigger my tier 1 and 2 I can't use them because I get that annoy bonk sound and the "Out of Range" message.

Again, Mea Culpa for the assumption. My long time observations contradict your statement. I mention what I have seen but did not note that when I am paying attention on my defender (because that is my role on a team with my defenders) and buffing blasters to the hilt to the best of my ability they are still the ones that die first a large majority of the time, followed by other buffing defenders, and then usually controllers. Accounting of course for builds and experience both of which I usually check for in all my PUG teammates as the team/league is forming.

Freems and Preems can't build for survival. They don't have access to the things needed to do so. I also actually like the thrill of the "glass cannon" play style and have only 1 blaster built that way.

My Main is an Energy/Energy/Force that is built for recharge. I have an "accidental" 10%ish defense from powers like combat jumping and some IO sets that granted both recharge and defense.

I play mainly as a blapper and rely on KB for a good chunk of my mitigation. I usually solo this toon on +1/x8 and die occasionally. My mitigation comes from:

1) Positional awareness.
2) The above mentioned KB and minor defense values.
3) Inspiration cascade.
4) Eye of the Magus followed by Geas of the Kind Ones, once Eye expires.
5) Force of Nature
6) Popping in and out of Personal Force Field to use Aid Self.
7) Phase shift when heavily defense debuffed.
8) Kinetic Dampener and Wedding Band temp powers when none of the above options are available.

Yep on incarnate and a good chunk of standard content the above blaster gets hit with a mez every mob unless I'm fighting enemy types that lacks them. I usually start with a tray full and combine up as many as I can as I go along. I use defiance if I get mezzed and there are only a few mobs from a particular spawn left. I still run out of break frees consistently on the longer missions.

I have other blasters that have other non-defense based focuses. None of them approach the built in abilities of any other ATs and it is mainly the amount and the durations of the incoming mez that is the culprit.

Having Clarion available changes things (hence my focus on some form of mez avoidance for blasters) and lets my blasters function at a level similar to my other toons provided I eat insps like candy on the blaster and pretty much ignore them on the other ATs. If I use the same amount of insps on my other toons as the blaster there is still a performance gap but I can live with that.

I always pick up Stealth instead of CD simply because Stealth unlocks Phase Shift which gives a much needed rescue power much sooner than Epic Pools.

Not at all. Are you telling me that with 7+ years of CoH experience that +0/x1 provides ANY kind of a challenge to any of your toons. It certainly doesn't for me. That kind of setting means I spend more time traveling to the mission than fighting inside it (at least on blue side where it can take 2 minutes to travel from one side of the map to the other.)

It is part of the baseline for NEW players. I remember when I first started playing. It wasn't easy. Now it's mindless. The 3 minion standard went out the window long before risk vs reward did. You also skip over the entire middle ground and jump to the pinnacle of performance incorrectly assuming that I think that should be the standard.

The highlighted portion is your false assumption. I occasionally PUG with new and inexperienced players that CAN'T. Depending on how much time you can devote to the game it can take a year or 2 to get to the point where you can rely on skill. This game has lots of casual players that never invest the time or feel that it isn't worth the time to invest and leave in just a short time. Time taken to accumulate IOs was the most often complained about thing by new comers to the market forums.

Comic book blasters are some of the most favorite comic heroes. CoH blasters are nothing like the ones you see in the comics (all the other ATs are a very close approximation though). People download the game, make a character like their favorite comic book hero, a Johnny Storm, a Hawkeye, a Cyclops, an Iron Man etc., go splat a dozen times in as many minutes and abandon the game never to return.

I was actually thinking the same thing. Your only argument is to tell me I can't use X comparison to Y as an argument. The only thing I am picking up from your posts is that you have trouble with paradigm shifts and want to maintain a status quo that went out the window in I9.

So I guess.... cya

Putting words in my mouth again I see. Extrapolating from 0 to infinity does nothing for your case. I am not basing it on a setting of +4/x8 at all. I merely mentioned once that a blaster with more is still less than a brute (or a scrapper for that matter) with less. What I am basing blasters being broken on is the following:

1) Blasters are mezzed significantly more often than any other AT. My own data shows that they spend 2-3 times more time mezzed than any of my other squishies and 10 times more time than my mez protected toons and that is considering the mountain of break frees munched through by my blasters that are rarely if ever used by my other toons.
2) Blasters spend more time mezzed than any other AT because they have no built in tools to avoid mez in the first place. (defense, to hit debuffs, AoE controls, mez protection)
3) Blasters spend more time mezzed than any other AT because they have no built in way to break out of a mez once they are mezzed.
4) Mez is extremely common in I23 (much more so than I5) it begins as early as level 8 and gets more and more prevalent the higher level the content is.
5) By design a blaster must enter combat. All they bring to the table is damage. This means that a blaster will be exposed to and affected by more mez than any other AT.
6) The few survival tools blasters have are eliminated completely when they are mezzed. (Defensive toggles suppress, offensive toggles that also provide mitigation are detoggled, the blaster's ability to remove threat by eliminating the target is drastically reduced, and the blaster's ability to utilize terrain and break line of sight is eliminated.)

This is a game. Playing is fun. Sitting at the keyboard waiting for mez to wear off so you can use more that 3 powers is not fun. Providing a fun experience should be the devs first priority.

There is also environment creep too. That means that power sets that lack tools to start with are worse off in comparison. Some times its fun to be over powered. It is a super hero game after all. The one thing it shouldn't do is put you entirely at the mercy of the RNG. There should be tools available to give you a chance to recover from the occasional bad streak.

You should PUG a bit more then. When I play my buffing defenders I am rarely needed by anyone other than blasters and other buffing defenders. When there are deaths it is always the blasters first unless they are played by highly experienced players. The blaster has earned the name "vengeance bait" for good reason.

I wouldn't need a sturdier character if I could keep the tools that I have by using the tools that I have.

I can and do play blasters well. I have blasters built for survival that perform all most as well as my scrappers and brutes. Building for any thing else (damage, recharge, secondary effects) results in a distinct reduction of performance especially in comparison. A full half of my 50s are blasters of one stripe or another the various power sets all provide unique playstyle opportunities. The one universal issue with them all is the proliferation of mez in the environment since I5 and a complete lack of tools to compensate.

I'm all for the edge of the chair, seat of the pants experience, that's why I focus on blasters and mez and not blasters and moar defense, resistance, hit points etc. I don't mind going to the inspiration tray for a break free once or twice a mission but I really dislike having to go to the tray for a break free once a spawn.

Being mezzed occasionally is thematic. (I think brutes, tankers, scrappers, etc should try it some times) being mezzed every spawn is immersion breaking.

Mez is much like lag to me. The occasional lag spike is no big issue. Lagging once a minute for 10-30 seconds is going to make me log off and call my cable company.

Tell me what you are basing it on then. Blaster design in the current game is all ready absurd. I'm not hearing any arguments from you that prove that they are not.

Naughty naughty, trying to put words in my mouth to prove your point. No other AT has these issues. I'm an advocate of making blasters work the way they ought to rather than the way that they do. There are no real issues with any other AT the do not need buffed or nerfed. The blaster needs to be rebalanced to accommodate the environment something no other AT needs at this point in time.

My, my, aren't we snarky. Lets turn it around a but in the same vein shall we. That's what I had 2/3rds the way through the last Carnie tip mission I ran. I started with a tray full of break frees and a setting of +0/x4, a setting I might add, that is essentially a breeze for any other AT if you have 5+ years of experience.

I'll also add that no other AT needs to start with a full tray of break frees. I can easily start with 4 on all my other squishies and none on my mez protected toons. The blaster is the only one that still needs to waste time going to buy insps between missions.

If I wished to be snarky and make inferences to your play style I would say that you should try running your blasters against things other than Cimerorans, Council, and Family.

I'll once again ignore the implied snark.

All the other ATs have different learning curves but they take about the same amount of skill and time to master. The blaster has a learning crater.

Well if we are talking about real life the comparison really breaks down quickly.

Would you go to a construction job with just a hammer? The blaster does.

Would you design an automobile with out seat belts?
A house without a fire alarm/sprinklers?
A ship without life boats?
A boat without life vests?

A blaster enters every combat without the tools needed to survive.

Bill. Bill Bill. Sadly this is no longer Issue 5 its Issue 23 and in issue 23 only new players use a +0/x1 setting. For long time players there is absolutely no challenge in that setting for any AT let alone the dev ignored blaster. Any arguments based on that setting are essentially specious.

Saying that YOU can do X with Y doesn't mean that the rest of the player base or even a large portion of it can do what you can do with an AT. The devs need to look at, and adjust to, what the majority of the player base does with the AT it is not a Memphis Bill-centric design.

Blasters are basic ATs available to all players, even Freems. They should work as well as any other basic AT (albeit differently from the other ATs). They do not, and most of your arguments actually prove that assertion.

You will be waiting forever then since performance (and thereby whether an AT underperforms or overperforms) is a comparison of the various ATs against the PVE environment in the hands of the total player base. Taking away comparisons removes the tools required to prove (or disprove) the argument.

You also appear not to have read the comparison. As the blaster player I "should" have the edge. I have more play experience, I have equivalent IOs, I have better versions of the incarnate powers, I have a higher ranged damage modifier, I have more total AoE. The blaster AT as a whole is supposed to have given up survivability for damage. In that case where is all this extra damage? Shouldn't I be completing the map MUCH quicker with the blaster?

The game's metric (and the devs proved that was the metric used when they introduced reward merits) is risk vs. reward. You need to tell me then why the blaster as an AT specifically is placed at more risk yet receives the same reward. Should not the blaster receive a higher reward for that greater risk? Shouldn't the blaster level MUCH faster when succeeding to make up for time and rewards lost due to more defeats?

That's odd. I thought the point of different ATs was to have different playstyles while having similar ability to succeed just different tools to do so. Sure YOU are managing spawns the rest of the player base however is not. That would be who cares. I have a better idea. If you feel that everything else is "monkey pound keyboard" easymode then you should use the tools at your disposal, slot nothing but SOs (or DOs, or TOs, or none), play through Oro under constant debuffs, solo, or play a different game that would be more challenging for you. (See I can do pointlessly inane too.)

I would agree with you except for one HUGE point that you are skipping. The Blaster niche - damage - HAS been given to every other AT when the devs decided that all ATs should have enough damage to solo. The only unique thing blasters have is that they are mezzed more often than any other AT, are defeated more often than any other AT, earn rewards slower than any other AT, and accumulate and pay off more debt than any other AT. I would say that is not the niche the blaster should be in or remain in.

Since a blaster is supposed to give up every thing else for damage shouldn't the blaster be able to farm the fastest of all the ATs since farming essentially boils down to doing damage to defeat things quickly?

Let me answer that. All ATs should be balanced relative to the game environment. All ATs should be notably different from each other and play differently. At the same time all ATs should be able to achieve a similar level of success from using those different tools.

Let me put it to you a different way. If balance is supposed to be a comparison of damage output to survivability and we know that the blaster is the AT that is supposed to be the lowest on the survivability scale then the blaster should also be the highest on the damage output scale.

Now lets turn that around. The tank should then be the almost unkillable king of survival and they should do almost no damage what so ever to get that survivability. The Brute should then be doing slightly more damage for slightly less survivability and the scrapper should be a bit more damage yet for a bit less survivability. That is not even close to the way it works. Giving the blaster enough damage to make up for that comparable lack of survivability would mean the blaster would be one or 2 shotting bosses without Aim or Build up. Elite bosses would also be trivial taking perhaps a dozen shots to eliminate. Only an AV would be a challenge. Since adding the required amount of damage would be exceedingly broken the answer is to add survivability in one or more forms to bring balance to the blaster AT.

What I want is the ability to handle common situations in the environment created by the devs with tools that are built into the ATs. It should not be a random "you can do X if you were lucky enough to get Y as a drop. Not lucky? Sorry, you lose." Blasters use inspirations to make up for tools they lack. ALL other ATs use inspirations to enhance the tools they all ready have and many of them can ignore inspirations completely. Blasters are the only AT that have the inspiration tray as part of their attack chain.

Yes it is.
Opps NO! I'm mezzed dang.
Opps, I guess not. I can't use inspirations when I'm mezzed.
Yay! Break free! Oh, wait I used the last one I had last spawn with the Carnie Illusionist. Wait I know I'll combine insps to make one! I have a big purple, 2 medium reds, a medium yellow, 2 medium greens, 1 small orange, 2 small wakies, 1 small green, 2 big blues, 1 medium blue, and 1 small blue. Dang, guess I'm screwed again.
Yay! Movement. Crap, I'm mezzed. No movement for me. Guess I'll have to play level 2 blaster and hope this 1/4 a bar of hit points that I have left is enough for me to finish off those 3 undamaged Steel Strong men charging in on me since I got mezzed right as I made my first attack...... Nope, guess not.

I'm tired of running out of break frees, purples, greens, oranges in content that my other toons don't even need to use more than the occasional insp for. Worse still, since my other toons don't need to use them I can combine them all into reds and completely outpace the damage output of the "king of damage"

Easy. Double the recharge, triple the damage. Snipes are fixed. They are a once a spawn tool to eliminate a mezzing lieutenant before they can mezz you. It recharges (and animates) too slow to be used as an ultra safe way to level but it serves EXACTLY the purpose that a snipe should fill.

Leave the crash in. Triple the damage and boost the target cap to 22. BOOM! nothing left of that spawn (except for the 5% of stuff you always miss) exactly what you would expect of the "king of damage" what's the penalty for that? 20 seconds that you aren't earning rewards instead of 2 minutes returning from the hospital.

Hey! Here's your brand new Ferrai. The fastest one ever made. "the king of speed" It's got all the bells and whistles. Multi-CD changer, AC, Sunroof every thing you need to drive down the road at hair raising speed.

Gas! No, no gas. That niche belongs to all the other cars. You can't have any gas. Get outa here!

You may simply have good twitch reflexes which may not be the case for a majority of the player base.

I've played blasters for a long time now. Frequently in a high mez environment planning accordingly is simply not enough planning mainly because of a lack of tools/resources. In another thread I listed some of the "time spent mezzed"/"time logged in" numbers of several of my characters. My blasters spent 2-3 times the amount of time mezzed as any of my other squishy characters and 10 times longer than any of my characters that have built in mez protection. I spend time soloing and teaming so I can only conclude it is a problem in both states. Since all blaster mitigation is either active or toggle and mez prevents active mitigation and suppresses toggle mitigation, having an AT that, by design, is only effective while able to use their powers without any built in means to maintain that state is "broken" design.

I'm not sure that defiance 2.0 solved that problem as the blaster that I have that spent the highest ratio of time spent mezzed/time logged in was created AFTER D2.0. That tells me 2 things:

1) Defiance 2.0 is letting me stay alive longer in the mezzed state.
2) I'm spending FAR too much time in game locked out of all but 3 of my powers.

Let's face it. This is a game we are talking about and leveling to 50 so that you can spend an unacceptable amount of time playing at an effective level of 2 while ALL other ATs are either virtually mezz proof or can avoid a large percentage of mez in the first place is NOT fun.

Depending on how the numbers work out I could have spent 12% (or more) of my actual combat time on my blasters in a mezzed state. (Once you factor out time spent doing other activities and time spent taking steps other ATs do not need to use or need to use much less often)

All that means is that you are not an average blaster player. I am not an average blaster player. I would venture to say that most of the forumites that have an interest in blasters are not average players either, however blaster balance is based on average player performance. Blasters have been underperforming ALL other ATs by a significant margin since long before D2.0 rolled out.

Tweaks are not enough. D2.0 was a "tweak" and it wasn't enough. The blaster AT as a whole needs a serious revamp.

My built for mitigation Rad/Fire/Mace Blaster (Soft capped S/L defense, 35%ish vs energy) can clear an AE map at +3/X8 that I play on with 0 or 1 deaths in roughly the same amount of time as my wife's dark/dark brute can (she usually finishes the map about 15 seconds earlier if I don't die. We frequently "race" simultaneously soloing this mission). My blaster has T4 Alpha cardiac, T3 Void Judgement, T3 Reactive interface, T3 Longbow Lore, and T3 Clarion Destiny. I feel "locked into" those choices (except for lore).

My wife has 1 year less CoH experience than I do. She plays on +4/x8. Her brute is IO'd for additional mitigation. In the last 20 times we've run this map she has died a total of 0 times (I've died 5 in 20). She has T3 Alpha Cardiac, T2 Void Judgement, and T1 Reactive interface.

I can clarify why she is faster with "1/2 the number of offensive tools"..... recharge. She can slot more global recharge than I can without sacrificing mitigation. The 2 toons have about the same amount of endurance draw. She can use all her best offensive tools seamlessly because of additional global recharge. If I could afford the same amount of recharge she would still do better because I am all ready using all of my best offensive tools as fast as I can activate them. I have attacks sitting in my power tray that only get used if my recharge gets debuffed because I have TOO MANY attacks available and little to nothing in the way of utility powers to choose from. What it boils down to is that she has 2 power sets to use and I have 1 because I can't animate my powers fast enough to use them all before something better is recharged and so I'm only getting to use 1/2 my powers most of the time.

Learning to play a blaster well will teach you tools and tricks that, when used by your other ATs, will transform them into minor deities. If you can stand the grind to learn I would highly recommend doing so as it gives you a better understanding of the game.

I'm so glad you can enjoy it..... but how about we let the devs revamp the blaster AT so that most of the rest of the players in the game can enjoy them too instead of having them abandoned more often than any other AT?