Morbeux

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Defiance sounded good but like most blasters correctly speculated doesn't help in the 30+ game. While it is a boost in the low levels, blasters didn't need help there.

Oh Doc's point about messing up the "AT" balance.

Took two samples on live and test a week apart.
Live
Warshade 2%, 2%
Peacebringer 3%, 3%
Tanker 20%, 21%
Scrapper 22%, 21%
Defender 17%, 16%
Controller 15%, 14%
Blaster 21%, 23%

Test
Warshade 1%, 1%
Peacebringer 1%, 3%
Tanker 10%, 10%
Scrapper 8%, 10%
Defender 35%, 23%
Controller 10%, 13%
Blaster 35%, 40%

The goal of I5 is kill as fast as you can because no one can take the damage anymore. This looks like the old days when blasters were 50%+ of the playerbase.


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Personally, I expect massive issue 6 nerfs for defenders and blasters when it becomes clear that tankers and scrappers have no real role in the game.

Teams of blasters and defenders (with some controllers for spice!) are going to dominate issue 5.

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No ofense, but you are sounding awfully bitter. The Devs have alreay said the next time there are going to be melee powers added. And taking results of population on Test is not a valid benchmark. Right now, new powers have been introduced in those areas, so people are going to log into the Test server to try them out. People are not going to log into a test server to try out the tweaks (as much as a NEW POWER), and people are definitely not going to log into the test server to try to create a permenante character. There are people on Live that would never play a blaster or defender regardless of powers or nerfs.

To truly measure this, wait till I5 hits the live servers, wait a week for the FOTM bug to go around and then regulate and I bet you will see a pretty balanced population again.

Personally, I plan to FINALLY make a Dark/Dark scrapper since they are giving a break on the endurance issue, and all my blasting days can wait.

I would have to agree that Defiance only looks good on paper, but fails to impress in the game.

Unless you plan on having Defiance kicking in at 99% health and then scaling up, the power is pretty much useless. In all honesty, when my health hits 50% and lower, I am not trying to go toe to toe anymore, I am looking for an escape to run and regroup to.

If my health is in the yellow - I definitely dont stay and fight, and would very much run at that point.

Trying to say you can increase our damage by X% at low health is just not an option to addressing the blaster issues.

A better idea would be to have defense scale up instead of damage. With higher defense towards everything (including AOEs) it would allow us to run away better without getting shot in the back.

May I suggest that you glance the Blaster forums and study the tactics used there. Very rarely you see blasters stating how they went "toe-to-toe" with some boss or AV.

Personally, my best times when I played was when I was able to use Super Speed while fighting. If I got into the yellow/red, I could actually get out of range before I took that fatal hit.

Ahh the joys of mass chaos!

So far Mind/Storm:

Goal: Mass Chaos

Powers: Confusion, Mass confusion, Telekinesis or a freezing rain.

Panic Power: Thunderclap

Tactics:

So far I open up with a healthy blast of max slotted Mass confusion, the follow up with the stacking of Confusion for any bosses. During that chaos, team rushes in and wipes floor with mobs with little risk. Freezing rain is used to soften up bosses, or those resistant to confuse. Telekinesis is used to push away the second group of incoming (if your mass confuse is not refreshed).

If, by some rare chance the players get a tad excited in the killing spree (happens a lot) and draw tons of unwanted aggro, one well placed thunderclap will stun everything to give you enough time to confuse/tele hold anything else.


This is a new tactic, but so far its working wonders. It may not be the most XP friendly, but there have been 0 Deaths so far, and the extra damage from the Mobs attacking each other means we blow through missions quickly.

Favorite mobs to deceive:

Sorcerers - can you say insta-empath defender?
FF Generators - insta-bubbler defender
Ruin Mages - earthquakes everywhere!! (But not on you)
Storm Shamans - Heh, just plain funny to watch!

I could go on and on, but confusing those huge enemy buffers to work for your team makes a huge difference in battles.

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I haven't played a blaster for a long time, but I completely agree that their damage needs to be upped significantly, specifically at the higher levels.

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An increase in damage doesn't stop you from being disoriented/slept/held/immobilized. It doesn't stop you from being swamped so long as you can't distribute the damage to the individual targets faster than a certain rate (that given the lessons of the past isn't likely to occur).

I fail to see the fascination with damage in terms of fixing Blasters. Damage wasn't decreased on their part on the road to breaking them, why would damage being upped be the fix?

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True, but a dead target (err...Arrested target) is not going to mez you. The faster we can take down the baddies, the less likely we are going to be hit by mez attacks.

Now, its hard to take down a group of mezzers, but if we could do enough damage in an alpha attack to take down the mezzers and maybe a few others, I feel that we might stand a better chance. Nothing worse than doing you big alpha and having a sliver of life left on the mobs and realizing you miscalculated your damage that tiny bit.

Yes, it does seem pretty scary the amount of scrappers and tankers and DEFINITELY defenders compared to blasters.

Most teams I have been on lately I have been the only blaster. I see a lot of defenders and scrapers and the popular fire-tank.

Maybe the reduced amount of blasters will show Statesman that something is wrong when they start data-mining numbers.

Would anyone be up to giving up melee powers for status protection. Maybe nothing as huge as the Melee protection, but something to prevent the occasional mez attack.

I would not mind it, but I know some people love the melee attacks.

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1. Implement PvP damage resist bypass in PvE.


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Translated, more damage. It seems that the king of damage is not king. Blasters already have low hit points, no status protection (not counting pools), and draw aggro like mad. We only have one way to beat these weaknesses, and that is to kill whatever is training on us. (Yes, there is the option of tank and aggro management, but even that is no guarantee)

Which is the last point, aggro. I start to wonder if Blasters are unfairly favored aggro magnets. An example, a defender shoots his electric AOE out and hits about 7 Tsoo. I throw out a single target fire blast on one of the minions to try to kill him. What happens is that EVERYONE comes running to smack me and runs past the defender (who is still shooting them).

I have seen other posts with similar stories of strange aggro attraction. If possible, can this get tweaked in I4 a little?

Actually, I would like him to answer one more small question.

Level Cap increase! Are there plans to go beyone level 50 (like level 75 or level 100) and content for the upper levels?

I would love the chance to have more powers to play with and more slotting to use on some powers. Plus, when ya just loooove your character, you dont want to shelf him at level 50, you want to keep playing him as long as possible.