Novacat_NA

.... and THIS, is why knockback distance should never have been touched by ED!

After reloading a few times only my Eng/Dev Blaster has the issue. However, no powers other than the auto'd accolades are on. Unfortunately system's too unstable (bad bad ram, IRQL BSODs if I so much as have more than CoH and the firewall running at once or if I dare try alt-tabbing).

The two 'auras' are full body and replace my usual (electricity) one. wrong colors too.

It would be extremely minor an issue if auras weren't murder on my dying old comp. Will try a friend's tonight to get the pic.

... after this morning's patch, every single one of my characters has a sparkly aura AND green glow. This is in-game only, however, in the tailor screen its all good.

I'll try to find somewhere to put up a screenshot.

Huge character's arms are very much detatched if you have the physique or chest sliders too low (or the shoulders too far out) when using "armored" option.
Even just a few more shoulderpad options to hide it would do.

So in other words... "well we made it start a bit earlier, but Working as intended"... Well, guess new players'll blast through the hollows faster than ever.... hope they get a chance to learn how to play before they reach the levels where it stops being any help... I was worried this would be the case...

Look it IS a great idea... for tankers. This still won't be much, if any help to us, especially now that our survivability tanks if we attack OR get hit. Seriously; defense, or resistance, or even just MEZ protection instead of more damage... These are what we should've seen.

Please understand; past the low levels, defiance means little more than "woo hoo, I don't have to carry those two reds with me to hit the cap, I just have to let myself DIE to do it".

Even by upping the thresholds, its just plain bad tactics for a blaster, and while with higher thresholds it might have come in handy if it were simply added to our current I4 defensive capabilities (well, sometimes, maybe...), many of these options have been reduced (halved or eliminated in many cases).

What blasters needed were MORE survivability options. I recall this was *acknowledged* by you guys, supposedly after seeing how despite loading up on pool powers like we weren't supposed to HAVE to, we were still dying in droves compared to our teammates.

Being able to cap out our damage when we can already come close enough with a handful of inspirations (well you'll probably say no one should be forced to carry inspirations to function, but then we'll just respond with the letters of the week: M, E and Z) is of very little interest or value to most of us. Sure they all got weaker also, but we also did. Not by as much in direct numbers, but we didn't have much to begin with, unlike some of the others. They got hit harder, but we weren't spared.

The HP increase is found by various bosses and many Lt's to be laughable (and by this I mean they laugh, not us), as in some cases the defense loss means status quo, while in others it greatly outweighs the HP boost while minions now hit us more than ever thanks to their untouched accuracy.

I sincerely hope you will not look at the disparity between blasters and destroyers/corruptors (bad with names, sorry) and think "well we'll just have to tone these guys down, blasters with defiance simply can't compare to this" ...

I know I'm touching different issues here but we can't just look at things one little item at a time. When we do that, we fail to understand how these interact, and work together to create more dead blasters.

RAISE us up to par... don't bring everyone down!

removed

I can somewhat understand being spotted when we fire (as it used to be; being seen but NOT being any easier to hit). Although I always thought there should be a few seconds for them to find where it came from, ESPECIALLY if attacked from behind.

Players sometimes need several seconds to spot where an attack came from [most especially when getting sniped from beyond visibility limits], but its always appeared as though no matter the hiding and angle, all villains come with a Skul-brand counter-battery-fire radar/sensor suite and one hell of a fire-control computer to go with it.

They instantly turn around and open fire with unhindered accuracy. At least the substantial defense buff inherent to the power added some realism to this by making it harder for them to actually hit.

These changes don't make much sense, and not just because it supresses the only relatively slot-worthy defense of blasters. If I'm hidden by cover, AND cloaked or hidden by mist, etc, and thus harder to see, they should have a harder time spotting me in the first place. Of course, even once they know where its coming from, it SHOULD be substantially harder [depending on how stealthy you are] for them to damage you. Especially in the dark, or when only partially in LoS. The supression kinda ruins that effect. On top of this, OTHER groups, ones that may have been close but weren't paying attention and weren't attacked, can now suddenly spot us because we get stealth-effect supressed for 10 seconds.

I fail to see how this can encourage people to take stealth (popular because they made traveling around and especially teaming less dangerous for squishies, as many layouts result in enemies being too close to pull one-group at a time) or team. The occasional potshot from getting too close immediately halves your defense, something many 'naw, stop whining' people were claiming we at least had left.

This of course hurts blasters the most, as stealth [and the other reduced pool defenses] were the only reliable (though meager) defenses we had... most of us were keeping these in mind (and well slotted) when explaining that blaster survivability was too low.

In other words, those that don't care about being spotted in the first place (non-squishies) won't be bothered much about the change, but once again the blow lands on the squishier types.

If being hit decloaks us, and attacking decloaks us, then I fail to see why you don't just drop their defense ratings permanently: Battle is the only time we need the defense, and half of it goes away.

*SUGGESTIONS:*

Add in a response timer to villains struck while stealthed [and raise nearby enemies not in the same group to alert, but do NOT supress the cloaking/stealthiness versus those groups, unless 2-3 shots are fired in this way (a 'hey, did you hear something' response, rather than everyone wasting the blaster)]. The timer would represent the several seconds of trying to figure out where the shots came from, which would be far more realistic.

Alternatively, I trust you'll be lowering minion base accuracy to 35% to compensate for the blow to blasters the defense changes brought on?

Or, better yet, if its because of the high-survival sets that you were trying to bring down by dropping everyone's defenses, why not just make it that it only supresses for purposes of MELEE? OR just give the meleers the lower % values for these powers, instead of the squishies that have nothing else to combine them with.

Sniping should also be stealthier to remain useful with these changes and allow better pulling. these guys manage to do the impossible time and time again. These are *minions* we're talking about. In most comics and games you'd take out more than half of them before they even figured out they were being sniped at. The Lt might run for cover and figure out where its from, but that would take him time; and being villains, he'd probably not call attention to himself by ordering the underlings to hit the deck!)
Wouldn't it make more sense for them to do like some of those Freakshow in brickstown and take cover or try to revive their colleague?

Some out-of-nowhere shot from some cloaked guy hidden on a roof took out their buddy, and not only are they not worried about him, they know exactly where it came from despite not even having been expecting combat at all?

I can understand wanting to bring the AT's in line with eachother, but removing one of the few alternatives squishies had to "bumrush with 4 lucks" isn't one of them. Please, add MORE choice, don't remove.

[ QUOTE ]
Now, I'll wax philosophic for a moment. Before I left, I posted a couple of things that a few posters thought were "flippant" or "snarky.

[/ QUOTE ]

We DO appreciate that it doesn't get run through PR [the only thing PR/political-correctness/marketting do is try to make it sound like a good thing].

as for responses; come on over to live (where blaster defense hasn't been... um, well, I guess pillaged would be an appropriate term, so that you don't die quite as fast with that tactic of yours) and we'll show you why defiance won't be much help, even if it DID have a chance to kick in, past the hollows.

3 words in case you don't have the time though: Volleys, Mezzing, accuracy.

(volleys as in those 5+ minions firing the same weapon with the same animation at about the same time)
(mezzing as in our primary source of death, even sometimes with a defender around)
(accuracy as in that thing that makes us whiff 2-3 shots in a row every dozen or so shots with a "95%" accuracy)

Um, probably because most of the other threads got answered... I only hope this is because they're busy testing?

As a % buff applied towards our cap, this makes it inordinately powerful in the early levels [where we didn't really need it to be] and nothing special later on [if we actually live to see it kick in]. Nice gimmick for atlas park and the hollows, where we're already considered on the 'overpowered' side of things (only because we're the only ones slotting our attacks that early), but certainly nothing to try and make use of later on where we're sub-par... even crits would be more reliable...

Its use, due to the blaster survivability problem [those who took no defense-improving powers whatsoever, or only had hasten saw an increase, but most others saw their defenses all but completely eliminated (we still have hover at 2.5%)] is rather questionable at best in later levels:

*Defiance means nothing when mezzed (the loss of defense once again means an overall increase in mezzing: they don't miss that first shot as often)

*Defiance means nothing when the point at which it kicks in can be 'crossed' [ie from 40% to hospital] in less time than it takes to fire your attack ("volley-deaths" have increased for many of us thanks to the eliminated defenses). This means that with current aggro-management changes, it may never even show up when teaming. Is this the sort of encouragement to team you're looking for?

*Defiance means very little if it randomly causes missing-streaks upon activating as was complained about.
[I've yet to experience this, though in my experience 95% means 85% at best, plus the occasional 100% whiff of an AoE...]

Obviously its not defiance itself causing our problems, but rather the old blaster issues once again. We needed a late-game survivability/utility increase, rather than an early-game damage buff.

Suggestion:
Instead of the current method, how about this... When firing, our defenses increase [your blast fried one of those slugs coming at you], effectively an AT-wide parry. The more we churn out, the greater aggro we're taking, BUT the safer we might actually be [let it stack a handful of times]. Rewarded for taking the risk we already take.

This would allow us to actually be defiant, and stand against said foes, rather than getting "bullsh**" called on us [quite sucessfully I might add] whenever our blaster defiantly claims that being cut down will only make him more powerful. Not only that, but it re-establishes blaster defenses to what they were, which combined with the HP increase finally means an overal survivability boost. This is a good thing.

This could easily be balanced [if need be] by extra limitspreferably not all at once...)
* when HP is below a certain point [like defiance now, except with a useful effect]
* the %/blast being dictated by levels [1%/blast at levels 1-10 for 5 seconds, 5%/blast at levels 45-50 for 5 seconds?]
* Affecting ranged attacks only [you melt the incoming bullets but all you did for that swiper claw was make it glowing-hot as it tears into you... ow!]
* Reducing defense or resistance vs melee [see the above reason] equal to what you're gaining against range (blasterlock? a good reason to keep the buggers away if you're firing?)

And that's just off the top of my head [many of us have suggested the firing/parry idea in many forms, so I'm not taking full credit for this.] Sorry its so long but I wanted to make sure to explain my points...

Edit:
Here's another suggestion: as a guy in a further page stated; the blastert types tend not to miss in critical situations. Actually they tend not to miss at ALL except against supervillains of their calibre or better.

What if we had up to 100, rather than 95% accuracy against minions and lt's [base so that lt's with forcefields,etc can lower that chance]? Of course the streakbreaker coding would have to be looked at, since 95% seems to mean anywhere between 80% and 90% against +0 minions or lower... And the idea is that there WOULD be no missing if we capped our accuracy out, against those...

That way we would have RELIABLE damage, that gets the little guys out of the way efficiently. If we're going to be minion-cleaners, we should at least be the best at it... we don't do that with more damage, we do that by hitting them!

Hell yeah. torment left baldur's gate 1/2 in the dust for plot and interesting things...I rank it right up there with the Fallouts (minus 'tactics' of course) as one of my favs.

knowing its THAT Shane working on the CoV setting... well that definitely perks my interest...

Come to think of it, wouldn't the old Planescape [the second ed stuff, where there was flavor, and where psionics was something you didn't wanna try on a demon, as well as being something subtle but efficient, as opposed to just spellcasters with MP and slightly different names for their fireballs (but even more rainbows?) aw crap, I'm ranting] make an awesome setting for the whole "players+devs+NPC's as source for other players+NPC's woes and missions" style we might get to see in CoV to go in next?

I don't mean more 3rd ed featfests, I mean the setting, used properly, in a nice standalone game...

It would be a step-up on the costumes/enemy-designs level, and obviously wouldn't be quite the same system for powers, but...

*note: not a subliminal message meant for States and Shane and if he ever reads this Zeb cook*

Hell yeah, more old planescape lovers! Greatest 2nd ed setting [Dark sun a close 2nd for me] ever! Too bad they creamed most of the flavor for 3rd...

Seriously, that's where the real heroics get done... outnumbered, outgunned by most things, hostile environment and struggling to eeke out a living and/or make a difference through it all

Wonder if kenzer'll ever do a "Hack" version of it... that would be most divine...

You mean harrassed by team members for healing the blaster, and/or harassed by the blaster for listening to the team?

But yeah, as the rest of us said: we die from single volleys, we don't get whittled down.

Stores: MASSIVE changes WILL be required for this to be viable. Firstly, either drops or villains themselves would need some changes, so that you're not completely gimped for having 2-3 trainings in a power just because you still can't get another Damage SO for yourself [magic not a problem, but techs drop rather rarely in the late 30's... though nemesis drops'em ok...]


Sounds more like states was agreeing with us on stamina though. the main problem is that its REQUIRED by many, and then endurance is never ever a problem anymore by most.

The fact that you can't get through half a fight without running completely out without it in numerous builds is a problem, and the fact that many others will never bottom out with it is also a problem.

Most likely it'll get fixed by no longer being necessary: this means lower costs so we can actually get by without it well enough.

Reason everyone goes and buys'em though is that you never get the right ones.

You end up at the end of a level 39 mission with 3 L36 DO's, one SO -probably a runspeed or defense-debuff of whatever you're not (WHY do freakshow drop mutations and occasionally magic? why do crey drop magic also? why does EVEYRONE DROP BLOODY MAGIC?), and a whole bunch of trainings, most of which you dumped to make room...

At the same time though, enemies are scaled to the assumption that you've got 6 SO's [or 6HO's starting at 40] in everything.

So we'd need the drops to change, or the villains to change, otherwise we're in trouble if we can't buy what we need.

Exactly.

Depending on exactly how its implemented it probably means we'll just blow through the early levels easier, and hit the same wall in the upper levels.


Unless of course we get some heavier resistances and/or an HP upgrade.... but without those? I fail to see how we'll have much of a chance to use this. Even with a defender... since we'd either be full [a really fast empath whose great at timing, or a bubbler], or dead anyways...

Don't get me wrong, I think its a very nice idea... But I'm just wondering if we'll ever get to see it. A buff you can't actually use is no buff at all.

Perhaps it would work better as a response to the whole "tankers do too much damage" idea instead: knock'em back down to 60% but let'em hit 80-85% by the time they're in the red. They can afford to whittle down.

Main worry:

This means one of our main fixes is... more damage.

1) Strings attached however. It better be a massive increase because if you thought it was hard getting a heal before, just wait till the team starts TELLING the defender not to because they want more damage.

team blaster: from dead to deader.
Solo: possibly less downtime [take on one group normally for a better chance at a full alpha-kill on the next? THIS could be interesting in a way...]

2) Hopefully this doesn't come with the damage debuff I fear it may.

3) Will it really be all that useful? Usually we go from full-green to orange or blinking red for about a SECOND, before the rest of the volley's animations finish us off.

So unless its a fully linear thing, or a series of buffs that activate for a bit of time when we fall under certain numbers... I'm not sure we'll even GET to taste that extra damage in the later levels where we'd need it.

Early on? sure, hellions can take a while to finish you off. But later? ... oops!

Atlas is flat. Galaxy seems better suited to people who at least have the first few minor-travel powers, such as hover, combat jumping or even hurdle/swift. Otherwise its a bit annoying to get around.

Also, Atlas is linked to Perez, the Hollows, Steel canyon and Skyway; all areas you often end up running around/through to get anywhere.

Galaxy is linked to what, Kings-row and perez? that's it? Kings row isn't all that great a place... Very unfriendly to lowbies lacking travel-powers. Its big, and the missions always seem to end up over on the edges, meaning you have to sprint (jog) across the map much like the hollows, except with more detours [once you're used to it those trips across hollows are dangerous, but pretty straight-line even with no travel powers], less reason to stay there ['bout 5-10 instead of 5-14 or so], and a lot of the missions back when I went through [this was before I3, I've avoided kings row since then] involve having to go to either the red zone while you're 5-6, or.... right back to Atlas park.

Missile Blast: Perfect for the swarm and/or contrail-loving tech/natural villain. Ranges from short dumbfire rockets to guided missiles [high acc or no-LOS required, with of course some sick aggro and costs to compensate if the latter], to a location-target ultra-short-duration "Rain" 32 [4-5 seconds of superior damage, instead of 20 seconds +effects]...

Can include swarms, full pods [for cone or cylindrical AoE], FAE's or cluster-bombs... Easily balanced [much AoE but mainly lethal/fire, so easily resisted... sorta like with AR]

Main advantage would be they launch themselves, so short animations. Main disadvantage is the recharge times are probably pretty high to compensate. Makes for an excellent "burst-damage" specialist with high range!

[note: these are more or less generalistic comments; we all know there's an exception or two to each of them; but even two or three of those sticking to a build would be too much. And its more like 'all but two-or-three' right now]

Well we *Percieve* a big red "go to hospital" button very often.

We *Percieve* our HP going from full to "two or three regen ticks under half" with a single volley from an average [4-6] group of white or yellow minions.

We *Percieve* ourselves as "held" for long periods of time one fight after the last of our 15-breakfrees we'd brought for the mission run out.

We *Percieve* some "go to hospital" button popping out of nohwere 20 seconds after the previous perception.

We *Percieve* a good chunk of mid and late-game villains to have much better range with their peashooters (those same weapons that take off those big chunks of green-bar) than we can hope to without tanking our damage down to the bare minimum in exchange for full range-slotting... on our sniper-shot.

We *Percieve* everyone using the magical "Tab" and "Left mouse button" keys to "pick and choose their targets" as they want, something thats supposedly a special advantage to blasters-only.

We *Percieve* that enemies which, like us, would normally TRY to stay away, at range, where they're safe from the melees, instead float over to the nearest teammate with a big "Slice Me PLZ" sign written in wax-crayon on their face, removing yet another way we could be useful to a team.

We *Percieve* every other AT coming damn close to what we can dish out, or at least having massive buffs/debuffs for teammates to do the same.

We *Percieve* those same non-blasters soaking/deflecting/pet-shunting up the mezzing and damage at rates we can't even begin to fathom, even if we combine pools with APP's and use cloaking-device.

We *Percieve* the only exception to that being some defenders, whom are too busy healing everyone or keeping bubbles up to really cause much, if any, aggro compared to their team [but being in the same boat as us if alone.]

We *Percieve* that lategame, the only time we're useful is for a few seconds before we die [dying makes us very not-useful while we suffer from it], and the only time we don't die is when we're phase-shifted [under which. lacking 9 imps or 3 phantasms+decoys we really can't be very useful] or staying away and NOT attacking. Attacking, by the way, is the main function and primary raison-d'ètre of the blaster.

And of course, we *Percieve* that we're even less capable on teams than solo, because its harder to control the situation when there's people running around that aren't either you or the targets, and because later on teams tend to go after purple things, which don't die when you hit them, and thus turn around and waste you where you stand.


Statesman is absolutely right: its definitely a perception of ours that we die more than everyone and can't handle nearly as much even when teamed. Just happens to involve our eyes and the monitor, that's all.

If "most enemies having range greater with peashooters" [BB's being a rather nasty thing to a blaster, killing him in two full-volleys from the average minion group if most of them hit] kills us, but "most enemies not having the range to outrange snipe" is an 'exploit' for blasters [even though the ability to regenerate faster than what 30 enemies can do even though they lack any way of removing said level of protection isn't, for some reason, despite being way faster]

Then can't there be a middle ground? Like, say, more Lt's and/or bosses in one group find themselves to be melee-only, while the minions keep their range? Or conversely for another group, only the Lt's and bosses have range but the minions don't [making the occasional minion-only small city-group popping up a pleasant treat for blasters]? Yet another group might just lower the range on the minon rifles to somewhere around, say, 120ft instead of 160+, but continue getting those nasty in-group sniper spawns?

OR, perhaps we could do like the old hellions and skulls, where only a FEW of them have pistols they can pop out, but since there's a wide variety of minions/spawn there would ALWAYS be a handful that way with the range?

That way we wouldn't be immune from it, but staying away would substantially lower damage against us, while not really changing much for the melees [since everything rushes to punch anyways]. Even if it means just 2-3 less in a hazard-zone spawn, or just "MINUS THE BOSS", this would actually mean range is worth something as a defense for us.

Besides, despite this, there would still be the fact that the mobs in a group that can't get within range to fire back would be doing what they always do now in this situation ANYWAYS: that is; running away.

Obviously, everything having better range than us to go with that damage they do is slaughtering blasters left and right. But Supposedly, blasters having a chance at outranging anything in the late game is an unacceptable easy-xp-cheat [despite the low low speed and it being just as risky as so many other AT-specific ways]. So if we can outrange SOME things in an enemy group, but be outranged by some OTHER things in a same group, this would fix our whole "not-quite-so-much-glass-as-crumbly-dried-styrofoam"-cannon balance a little...

or maybe just outranging those mezzers a little more often? that would be nice; it really sucks getting held 200ft away from a target...

Defenders, not needed?

sure 25% damage buff means little to a 50 blaster... But it's great for a scrapper and tanker, and controller.

Sure a forcefield doesn't mean all that much to a capped tanker... but has he thought of turning off one or two pure-def toggles and enjoying more attacks while these are up? And I know for sure no blaster will EVER say no to some bubble action.

Then there's Speed-Boost (AKA "Crack")... AM (AKA the OTHER crack), Fortitude, healing, Fulcrum Shift, healing, Tar-Patch, Enervating-Field, Recovery Aura, the heals, the full-power rezzing, various healing powers, the BIG bubbles, Rad.infection, Shadowfall, O2Boost, steamy-mist, snowstorm, EM Pulse... All of these great things to have no matter what your level...

The only thing that MIGHT fall behind a little is just plain healing (even then, the blaster survivability upgrade package will probably make empaths extremely useful to us for non-RA reasons), but just remind your tankers that with it they can take even MORE enemies at a time...

I'd say it is. There's some parents, even GRANDPARENTS playing this game. Many have jobs and/or school and/or lives outside our comp, and with the rising average age of gamers (not because less kids game, just that a lot more of us STILL play like we did 10~20 years ago which brings up the bellcurve), and one of the appealing things of CoH is that you CAN get on for 20-40 minutes for a mission or two, and then go back to what you have to do.

Part of this is the soloing; which is why balance is so critical

another part is the mission system; you can just do one quick mission and that's it. There's longer stuff available, but all except the 'timed' missions can be paused... which is far different from letting your lootable, killable character down in the middle of a dungeon for 2 hours while you go fix up lunch!

sorry, just that the whole "higher risk" bit alway smakes me laugh nervously....

The HP difference balances that out... THAT'S why they have more HP. They take a bit more in melee, so they have a bit more.

We supposedly (uhuh, right, because the 'high' part of our damage ISN'T melee-ranged) take less from range [true for a fair chunk of the game, at least in actual naked, before-mitigation numbers anyways] since we stay out of melee, and this more or less evens things out...

The higher cap we can balance out with the fact that its mostly lethal/smashing damage.

The "blasters can pick their targets at range" is rather misleading... ANYONE can pick their targets before firing.

As a matter of fact, there's this special command (we'll call it "The left mouse button") that when used in combination with a secret hacked-loot you get at 50 only (the legendary "cursor") allows ANYONE, not just blasters, to pick their targets, much in the same way that "cursor+leftclick" inherent ability of blasters lets them do this.
Those that 'don't have a choice' only don't have one because they ran in without looking (some don't need to after all) and just tab through everything as they slash. 'course they don't NEED to pick their targets... if they did, they'd do so.

But the defenses? the resistances? the immunity to status-effects (just as common fighting at range as in melee in MOST cases)? We're not in melee QUITE as often as they are, but we already have a penalty for our higher damage; its all done in that 'melee' range.

Can't wait to see what blasters get in exchange for lacking THAT

As far as blasters go, the problem is that there was already just about no room for error whatsoever. We always have [and still do] survived by a razor-thin margin. Even with top-skills we're still hanging partly on sheer luck to survive, a factor that can just swing against us suddenly (see how well things go when you miss all except one-dude with firebreath, for example? ouch!)

I completely agree that it put a penalty on sloppy play; the only problem is that WHAT was upgraded (the HP and damage) wasn't the right way to do this. All that did was greatly increase the chances that DESPITE a perfect setup and flawless execution (still required in many cases), the dice were stacked against you.

The extra HP meant that your perfect alpha-strike didn't even knock half the boss's HP out. It also meant you were taking 40% (more like 50% actually, seeing as this directly affected their regeneration) longer to kill it. That's at least 50% more shots this boss gets to lob at you.

The extra damage meant that bosses that once had to hit you 2-3 times (which is pretty easily done considering our defenses on average) suddenly didn't need to. Two, and sometimes just ONE(if said boss was red or purple) shots were able to take us down.

In other words, what already required above-average setup and play suddenly also gave the target a longer lifetime (and thus more chances of firing and hitting) as well as a higher chance of killing you outright with a single hit. Since our typical survival rate assumes near-flawless play already (not boasting, we just don't have a choice in the matter; trivial-error = death), there's no maneuvering room for a blaster to "adjust" with this kind of boss upgrade. We're already up against the wall, and that just electrified it with poisoned needles.

This REMOVED a lot of tactics from boss-fights as far as blasters were concerned...

We went from "set things up just right, draw off the minions or have'em taken-out in the alpha, and hope everything goes ok" to "pop 5 purples, 2 reds and a discipline, snipe once, twice if you're lucky, pop an awaken and repeat in hopes you'll beat his regen-rate doing this"

While many blaster builds are better suited to minion-work, there's just as many that can do as good a job (offensively at least) against a boss as a scrapper might hope to do. Obviously those sets would be focusing on that boss, just as a spines/dark would be playing AoE dustbunny with the guys around the boss. Might actually be a VERY workable pair actually, due to the other problems:

1) Bosses HURT. Much like squids and quantums, we get REAL fidgety even if there's a tank in the team, whenever there's a boss. Especially a mezzer. One-shot death may not really occur anymore, but one-shot DEFEAT (the slow lingering 'ran-out-of-breakfrees-on-the-second-floor' kind) happens all the time.

For one thing, the ******* might disengage for a second just to turn us into 'smoking-crater-man', with the strength, speed and mass of 10 lesser burnt-patches-of-grass, for no good reason (lagspike? cloaking-hate? the fact that we hadn't shot yet? only the Shadow knows!) And if we ARE firing at the minions, he could very well be building up a lot of aggro against us, especially from the AoE's that finished off those guys before they DID turn around... Either way, bosses = bad bad stuff.

2) Some Scrappers save the bosses for last.... Why? beats me. You'd think the only kinda-semi-sorta-serious risk for most scrappers would be the first guy they want dead, especially if the # of minions around you helps determine how much defense you actually have... yet strangely enough I've noticed what you have many, many times.

Perhaps its just the 'satisfaction' of one or two-shotting minion after minion, 'wading' your way to their leader that's standing ... uh, well... 2feet closer than any of them, and is behind you... Or perhaps its scrapperittis, the inability of some players to pay attention to anything else then all the shiny sword-swinging to do much more than just tab their way through a group?

The improved HP/Damage on the bosses actually made squishies even LESS useful, except perhaps force-field defenders. More HP meant you had to wait a LOT longer before you could fire, as a blaster, since the slightly higher damage could QUICKLY build up into you winning the aggro over. It made empaths useless to all except tanks and some scrappers, almost, since other squishies weren't even surviving a single shot, or two-hit combo. low-level controllers, since they'd run low on endurance FAR before the boss was even half-dead, were down to 'hold-chain with blind for half an hour and hope one doesn't miss' or a nasty beatdown if said boss had friends.

Now buffs/debuffs on the other hand... those would be a far better choice for a boss upgrade. Getting caltropped is one thing, but tar-patched is quite another. Going from 4-shotted to 3-shotted by a 20% res debuff doesn't mean much to me as a blaster, but that same % debuff might mean double or triple the damage a tanker was taking before it landed!