Thinkso

Ill/cold is about this good: taken from the rikti pylon thread. There are a few strong controller showings in the upper end of this task, but ill/cold is head and shoulders above anything else.
409 Illusion/Cold/Ice Controller - Frosticus
321 Bots/Storm Mastermind - Frosticus
317 Illusion/Cold/Ice Controller (no -regen) - Frosticus
294 Bots/Dark Mastermind - PettyTheftz
291 Dark Melee/Shield Defense - Gaidin
289 Dark Melee/Shield Defense - _Mojo_
286 Dark Melee/Shield Defense - BrokenPrey
283 Dark Melee/Shield Defense - Eva Destruction
282 Fire Control/Radiation/Fire - Dave P
281 Unknown MM combo (bots?) - Simak
278 Dark Melee/Shield Defense - Santorican
276 Fiery Melee/Shield Defense - Iggy Kamakaze
270 Crab Spider Soldier of Arachnos - Krogoth
267 Dark Melee/Shield Defense - Igor The Mad
264 Mind Control/Fire/Fire Dominator - Fiery-Enforcer
262 Fiery Melee/Shield Defense - Machine Man X
262 Dual Blades/Electric Armor - Shadowsylph
262 Bots/Dark Mastermind - Lord Thanatos
260 Illusion/Radiation/Psi Controller - Reverence
259 Fiery Melee/Shield Defense - Norse
255 Dark Melee/Shield Defense - Besserwisser
255 Fiery Melee/Shield Defense - Fury Flechette
254 Fire Melee/Shield Defense - MunkiLord
252 Fire Melee/Shield Defense - Effy On Malibu
249 Fiery Melee/Shield Defense - SkylineGTR
247 Fiery Melee/Shield Defense - Enots
243 Fiery Melee/Shield Defense - Primal Dark
242 Dark Melee/Shield Defense - MrLiberty
242 Fire Control/Radiation Controller - Dave P
241 Dark Melee/Shield Defense - Powerforge
241 Fiery Melee/Shield Defense - Reverence
241 Fiery Melee/Shield Defense - Psyoxic
241 Illusion/Radiation/Ice Controller - Vernichterhelge

from reading that thread Frosticus is the only illusion user that adjusted his time to reflect the large portion of psi damage that illusion trollers do as the pylons have no psy res, but res to everything else. In one of his posts he had a sub 2 min time, which is faster than many 8 person teams can do.

It's also about this good:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=226677
Other than him though I haven't seen anyone really using ill/cold. If you want to play it safe then ill/rad is quite common, so finding advice on builds/strategies would probably be a lot easier (heck one ill/rad expert is already in this thread).

Cold is definitely better on trollers than it is on corrs. Trollers get the higher -rech/slow values like defenders and benumb is already at 90% -special, which is an astounding debuff and a lot stronger than the -56% corrs get. The other big difference is that corr blast sets usually don't have anywhere near the mitigation of a control set, so while cold itself isn't that amazing at protecting the caster a control set can make that issue significantly less of an issue.

Between fire/rad and ill/rad the fire has higher st and aoe damage potential. However, the ill/rad is among the safest toons in the game (like seriously no big bad guy is too big for you to face off against except maybe Hami cause he can kill PA).

Every AT, with the exception of HEAT's has a least one spec that can solo at least some lvl 50 AV's.

That said a Warshade might be able to do it if they had enough persistent Mire fuel.

At any rate, solo'ing most single AV's isn't much of an accomplishment any more. IO's have pretty much made this a realistic goal for anyone that wants to do it. Solo'ing AV's as quickly as possible and/or solo'ing multiple at the same time is still an activity that can set a pretty high standard for others to measure up against.

neat. Should I congratulate you for taking a position of ignorance on this matter? 50 of each. The NW is IO'd to the gills, the bane isn't. I haven't turned up his def and his recharge is still just shy of perma pets. The second build on the NW is a heavily IO'd (perma ML) fort, which I personally find a lot more effective than the NW.

However, I can simulate how the Bane build will be once finished with a small def insp and the base salvage recharge buff.

Additionally, I have spoke extensively with Frosticus about his research into Banes, which interestingly enough came after he peaked out the abilities of his own NW at just shy of 250dps in game. While the fact that my bane can do heaps more st damage than my NW is obvious to me I still defer to his knowledge when it comes to making extreme damage toons, which can be confirmed by a quick glance at the rikti pylon thread where his own toons sit at the top with nothing even approaching the mark. If he tells me Bane's have almost inconceivable dps potential compared to what we are used to seeing as "high" damage toons then I believe him. Also I've seen it for myself with my own. It is some what situational, but insane is the only work I found fitting.

The ONLY thing holding a bane back from slaughtering every time posted for rikti pylons (short of Frosticus' ill/cold) is that the aoe spam will wipe the pets because the bane needs to be in melee and so are they.

You don't understand it if this is the position you hold.

Ahh see I'm talking about a bane that uses the damage tools available to them. I'm very glad you agree that a bane that does that is potentially a lot more damaging (st) than a NW. I've haven't contested that a petless bane does less damage than a NW any more than I've contested that a NW without mindlink does less team buffing than a bane...

Banes are not any different than any AT combo in the game. They are a concert of all of their powers. A blaster that skips aim/bu does less damage than one that takes those powers. A MM that skips a tier of pets has less survivability in BG mode and less damage potential. A NW is very easy to make tough and highly damaging. However they are restricted on the top end because all they are is raw damage. The result is that while a bane may appear to be lower damage, when you start layering in the extra sources of damage and the damage boosting abilities the results are among the highest possible in the game.

People can choose to believe that or not. All I know is that I've taken my unfinished bane, shored up the survivability with insp (until the build can be finished) and killed AV's at a rate that would make a NW's head spin. Unfortunately the aoe size of the pylons spam attack is just too large for the build to excel at that specific high hp task.

I agree, balance is a stupid thing to pursue. i4 was a heck of a lot of fun. Things should have stayed like that...

umm ok

I'm not following this tumultuous leap in logic. Certainly no one other than you is saying this.

The difference is I'm speaking holistically about each AT in question. Certainly a sonic/em blaster will have better tools for dealing with mez than a fire/pain corruptor. By across the entire AT corrs/defs/doms/mm have signficantly more powerful tools to reduce/negate mez in its entirety. Shoot while mezzed is great, but it still leaves every blaster at drastically reduced capability. By design the AT is still the most susceptible to mez. If they weren't then there would be a balance concern in the other direction.

I'm not sure I follow what you are saying here. Are you saying that if a mez hits then the blaster is tougher than those other squishies because they have more hp to fall back on? If so that makes sense, but a huge part of my point is that those other squishies have more tools available to make the mez not a factor in the first place. A blaster reacts to mez always (baring the limited control options they have) whereas most other squishies preempt the mez.

If/when the preemptive measures fail most squishies still have stronger tools than the blaster. Many debuffs have a lingering effect that continue to significantly reduce the danger while mezzed.
Fair enough



There was so much incorrect in this post that my eyes almost bled reading it. Anyway, I wanted to highlight this section as it proves that you either aren't reading or understanding what I'm saying as I explained why 40% was used and I also showed a brief model at 50%. In otherwords, pretty bad failure on your behalf.

Anyway, no one is saying that blasters can't be fun. Please stop basing everything regarding a balance discussion around that. You can't proclaim victory over something that the other said never once claimed. Well you can, as you and a few others have, but it is pretty silly.

Personally I greatly enjoyed having 3 sets of fire imps. That was great fun. I also enjoyed my invincible (literally) invul scrapper back then. More recently I liked my old PSW /psi dom and my uber nuke shield charge. Really fun stuff. However, if it is inappropriate to use "fun" as the foundation of an argument to support something that is overpowered, what honestly leads you to think that the same argument will hold up when something is underpowered?

If you can answer that I think I'll understand what you guys are saying better. If you can answer that then I'll likely agree with what you have been saying this whole time.

Why do you keep saying this when it isn't true? My bane can kill single targets faster than your NW. In a team where aoe makes more of an impact the team with my bane can kill things faster than the team with your NW.

How is that significantly less damage?

Banes have the highest st damage output and they are the best -res debuffers. There is no perhaps about it.

The actual truth is that NW's are the ones that don't dominate at any single category. Crabs have the highest aoe and are the tankiest. Bane's have the highest st damage and the best -res. Fort's have the highest team mitigation.

NW's are really good at a lot of things, but I'd say Forts win at being the most flexible.

This would be good news indeed. I haven't checked since i16 or 17.

Yes and shatter armor. I know the latter isn't limited to bane's, but it seems designed for them in that it does not cause redraw (detracting some attraction for widows) and they tend to be in melee range anyway (detracting some value for crabs and most forts).

I have cloaking for the def and lotg, but I don't actively seek to use hide by altering my playstyle around it. I can almost always get to the next spawn before hidden kicks back in. I won't slow down for it.

I just straight up kill stuff with maximum pets out as often as possible, venom grenade, surveillance, double assault, and shatter armor making them and me do the most possible damage whether alone or in a team. In the grand scheme, slowing down so that I can land a partial crit is not worth it.

And once again the ability to separate subjective and objective is a skill that many people lack. My enjoyment of the AT doesn't preclude the absence of my ability to objectively discern where the AT lacks relative to what else is available in the game. For some people it does.

The OP specifically asked " Does the Blaster AT literally become mediocre damage and low survivability?"

His questions have little to do with the subjective aspects of the AT do they? What does the AT being fun have to do with their damage and/or survivability? What better way than via numbers would you suggest assauging his requests for information about their damage and/or survivability?

Unfortunately your conclusion that you find the AT fun should also coincide with the conclusion of this discussion is about the same as me saying that I enjoy driving, therefore I should be able to get an excellent mortgage rate on my house. They make about as much sense.

I apologize if you feel that your statement should have had more impact, but being that it is irrelevant to the subject of this thread...

Guess I should have showed more combos
5 defs+3 blasters = 1250 damage.

So the addition of a 5 def > adding the first blaster.

So like I said earlier it isn't until you are filling the last spots that raw damage becomes preferable. And that entirely ignores the additional benefits the debuffer is bringing, which is about the same as ignoring an elephant standing next to your sofa, but oh well.

So under this simply model 5 defs+ 3 blasters is the highest output.

If one were to be a bit more generous to defs and pretend they did 50% as much damage with the same attack the highest output combo would be:
4 defs + 4 blasters = 1320
5 defs +3 blasters = 1375
6 defs+ 2 blasters = 1400
7 defs+ 1 blaster = 1395
8 defs = 1360

Under both examples though the difference between 5 defs + 3 blasters and 7 defs+1 blaster is insignificant from a damage perspective. I highly doubt the same can be said from a mitigative perspective, or if one looked at any of the other buff/debuffs those extra 2 defs bring compared to the 2 blasters.

And once again this is an example involving the lowest damage AT in the game. A similar look at corrs shows that you might give a blaster the last spot on your team if you are feeling nice, but that's about it.

What these models clearly show (to me at least) is that:
A. Forcemultiplication is probably too strong in this game - which iirc Castle has even comment on in agreement
B. The damage "juggernaut" blasters aren't a big enough hammer being swung. If they were actually damage juggernauts there would be little question that adding one is the superior damage choice because they would be a huge force to be multiplied.

The fact that a puny defender has such strong forcemultiplication that they can take something that does 40% as much raw damage and turn it in to more damage than the blaster would add supports both premises pretty well.

I know rite? fire tanks herding an arena full of players into a dumpster and burning them all to a crisp was clearly the motivation for numerous, drastic game wide changes.

You saved the best AT for last. Probably a good decision as a powerful and well specc'd controller may ruin some of the other AT's for you

I'd recommend a damage oriented controller as they still bring 'enough' control for most situations while the additional damage is very welcome while solo and on teams that need a bit of an offensive boost.

fire and illusion for single target.
fire and plant for aoe.

Mind is also a solid single target set, but gets left behind very quickly by the pet centric sets (especially fire and illusion, proly elec too) once they have their army of pets going.

For secondaries, rad is always a solid goto set.
Storm works very well for controllers as they are able to leverage the strengths (offense) and mitigate the potential weaknesses (scatter, weakness to mezzing, inability to repair health) quite well through their controls.

Lastly, if you are fully commiting to the long road to power that trollers tend to be then my number one recommendation for secondaries is cold. It takes a long time to get up to speed, but it is an astoundingly powerful buff/debuff set and just like storm, trollers are able to mitigate/negate the weakness of not being able to repair your own health through their controls.

edit: kin is also a tremendous secondary for trollers. They have the mitigation to negate the squishiness of kin and one of the best aspects is that the troller can still slot their powers for maximum control and still easily be running around with their damage capped. They gain a lot from kin in that regard whereas other trollers have to slot some of their powers as attacks if they want to deal high damage. Kin lets you maximize your primary control and your damage, so it is pretty great.

I really don't agree with this position. Yes a NW is more damaging than a Bane that skips key damage powers. A bane that forgoes its pets is a Bane that is consciously reducing their direct damage abilities by a very significant margin. That is fine if someone chooses to do so, but I wouldn't say bane's are more defensive just because someone skips key defensive powers on their NW.

Just using venom grenade in a team makes a Bane contribute way more than any NW in terms of team offense. A Bane could use nothing but that power and the team would complete missions faster than the most pimped out NW in its place.

NW's are better from a defensive vantage and Banes are better from an offensive vantage whether solo or teamed. Where each excels they are a fair bit better than the other.

Crabs are pretty beastly, but are a whole different discussion just like Forts. Both those branches have a very different playstyle than banes and NW's who tend to play much more similarly, just with different areas of excellence.

Personally I don't think a NW is better than a Bane or visa versa, they just focus on different strengths. I have little issues with mitigation so I tend to like my bane a bit better than my NW for the superior offense (solo and teamed), but I also know that some people enjoy the higher survivability of the NW (solo or teamed)

Definitely. Personally I found them to be even more fun before the new version of defiance, but at that point in time there were determined to be underpowered and in need of a sizable buff.

They were certainly less effective back then, but then again:
effectiveness =! fun
I mean being effective can lead to having fun, but it doesn't always have to anymore than being less effective leads to not having fun.

One of my favorite toons is my energy/rad corruptor. It's pretty junky compared to my fire/traps, ice/kin, and fire/cold for the most part, but it is pretty fun to play most of the time.

That said, being able to separate the subjective from the objective is quite difficult. I loved blasters pre defiance buff, they were crazy fun for me, but I was still aware that they were not nearly as capable as other AT's. That didn't subtract from me enjoying them, heck at times it may have even heightened my enjoyment by playing an underdog. While buffed quite a bit with the new defiance they are still quite short of the mark relative to the other AT's in the game, but that doesn't necessarily have to impact their fun factor.

I think you read a different post than mine to draw that conclusion. I certainly didn't say anything like that. At about 6 defenders you are starting to approach the point where they are interchangable from a damage perspective, but that means ignoring whatever else the defender is bringing of value, which is almost always more than a blaster will bring.

That also isn't necessarily saying that adding a blaster is even the best addition at that point. I mean sure a heavy buff/debuff team usually has no issues diving head first into everything the game has to offer, but sometimes it is still nice to have a scrapper or brute to lead the charge. It's not like brutes and scrappers are much behind blasters if at all when it comes to damage. It mostly depends on the combination in question. And having a focal point for all/most agro further frees up the defenders to go willy nilly, which may not always be the case if the agro is being dispersed like it may be with a blaster in that spot.

I thinkso too

But that was largely the point. I wanted to highlight is that even being generous with the numbers in favor of blasters the power of forcemultiplication on a whole team is tremendous. It is very difficult for a single damage source to equal it let alone be more valuable

It's difficult for what is supposed to be the highest to do against the lowest damage AT in the game. It only gets harder when you up the anti with the additional firepower something like corrs bring.


Yes, this x100. the buff/debuff AT's (and doms) have powerful tools to mitigate/negate mez before it ever becomes a reactionary issue. Blaster defiance while a major advantage over having nothing still leaves the AT as by far the most susceptible to mez.

I took indom will on my fire/storm troller not because of any apparent need, but rather because I run a lot of offensive toggles and having them drop was an annoyance. Everything was always debuffed or otherwise mitigated into the ground where being mezzed rarely put me in trouble...it was just bothersome.

He can potentially go a lot higher than that. I've seen it stack 4 or 5 times under combat attributes.

Of course it doesn't actually WORK and is bugged. It will say -500% regen on the first blast in red brackets, but an AV's regen will remain at 94.23hp/sec most of the time. If and when it does work it flicks on for a split second and then flicks off.

The assualt bot's -regen was the premise behind making a bots/storm that would kill everything insanely fast. Storm has the highest damage potential of the secondaries and bots would take care of the -regen that it is missing. Unfortunately the bugged plasma blast put a damper on the party.

This always works for me. The first time I nearly had an aneurysm trying to claim the pvp +3% def I sent to a different toon.

Yes a NW on their own is more damaging than a Bane on their own. Though if you min/max both the difference is much smaller than I think most people realize.

IIRC Frosticus showed me that a min/max NW could do around 260 and a similarly expensive bane could do around 220 dps.

NW is also more survivable with easily softcapped def, so it may seem like the NW is clearly superior. But when a bane pulls out his pets his damage skyrockets past what a NW can do. Additionally a Bane brings way more offensive forcemultiplication to a team whereas a NW brings more defensive buffing. I prefer the offense, but both are great.

Taken in context and on a general examination, yes Blasters do drop dead as a result of mez more than any other AT. It is a huge part of why attack-while-mezzed was given to them, but don't mistake that with the devlopers elevating them out of their last place position when it comes to being susceptible to mez. That is by design. They are less susceptible than they once were, but still in dead last place.
These AT's by and large have a multitude of tools at their disposal to reduce or negate the threat of mezzers in the first place. Much more than blasters.

Even mentioning doms makes me question if you are being serious. Not only is a huge aspect of their game actively mezzing enemies prior to engaging them, they have domination, which even at lvl 1 and before any sort of build maturation provides significant mez protection for a solid portion of the time.

If you were being serious with that last statement then I feel bad for you. If you just kidding then good troll I guess.

Well I can state as a fact that corruptors working together can easily outdamage blasters working together. That largely works as intended in the game that focuses so heavily on very strong buffs/debuffs.

A team of 8 corrs does heaps more damage than a team of 8 blasters along with being infinitely more survivable. The only point worth debating is at what point does adding a raw damage dealer like a blaster become a better choice than adding an additional corruptor. That answer will depend on the specific combo, but from a general standpoint it is probably rarely before the 4th to 6th corr has been added and often not at all.

So as it were, math can be hard. Or at least too hard for most people to grasp because there is a heck of a lot more involved with comparing corrs to blasters than just looking at their AT modifiers. I don't want to insult anyone that thinks that is the extent of the work involved, but it is a very ignorant position to take.


From a solo perspective there are definitely some corrs than can out damage some blasters. The most damaging solo corr probably does more damage over time than the most damaging blasters, but they are both pretty dicey (fire/kin vs fire/fire) so largely comes down to player ability. Many solo corr combos can end up keeping pace with many solo blaster combos simply by virtue of being able to survive against more/harder foes. The damage going out may be smaller, but by being able to take on and survive against more/harder (high con) foes the reward rates can fall closer together.

But again, just like examining things from a team perspective there is a lot more involved than just referencing the wiki and saying 1.125 > 0.75.

They have. Her name is Mellisa and she is the lead dev. Additionally, all the devs seem to be more RP focused than anything else.
This is something that most companies really struggle with. The flood of "i13 is teh suck" posts is actually highly valuable feedback. It should (but didn't) put up an immediate flag that something isn't right and more focused feedback is required.

Rather than just hoping that the perfect feedback comes in and the right dev in the right mood stumbles across it, smart companies know how to get their consumers to give focused and constructive feedback when they need it.

PS has gotten a bit better at it. Now you see focused threads detailing the category of feedback they want and have it broken down into subjective and objective. That's not bad.

Plenty of excellent feedback was given with regard to i13 and only an idiot would deny it existed. Heaps of non-focused, but consistently negative feedback also came in. Smart developers would have figured out how to get the specific feedback on exactly what was causing problems. It is really really easy to do with a customer base that is as devoted as people using this product, that are also so willing to speak candidly about the product.

It's a feedback goldmine that they largely suck at taking advantage of.
Can you imagine? I've never seen him post anything that was right. I'd support it if only because current pvp is already trash and it would be humorous to see just how badly he'd do in the position.

Edit: my personal position is that the ship sailed a long time ago of building a pvp sector in this game. It is unfortunate because the potential was huge and it looked like they wanted to make a go of it with 4 huge and well detailed pvp zones and a network of arena systems. Unfortunately the saying "if you build it they will come" really only holds true if you finish construction. No one would have come if all he did was knock down the corn field and put a water jug on a bench... though it would have been comical if he then acted baffled as to why they didn't come, sort of like what has happened with pvp in this game.

Your second paragraph is a direct contradiction of the position you are taking in the first one. People that run the same content mulitple times (especially TF's) are by nature not RP'ers. Unless you want to sell me on the RP that goes into the notion of Katie Hannon getting trapped yet again in the exact same ploy as she was trapped yesterday, and Mary magically (though they are magic based, so that's a start) returning to full strength and requiring another 10x beatdown. Better yet RP me how you just saved the world from Lord Recluses evil plan only to find him trying the exact same thing the next day. One of the only multi-run through content that works from an RP context is Nemesis.

If you repeat the same monumental content (heck even on different characters) you aren't a character/story based RP'er. You might RP successfully in other areas, but not in that one.

"yay we just defeated the god-like Hamidon"..."oh he's back"

Just because I put out a jar of candy doesn't mean I'll be able to lure kids into my van...

If they tried listening to the things that pvp'ers tell them, they wouldn't have attempted nearly all of the half-***, poorly thought out and implemented "PvP" (though most have nothing to do with pvp) reward systems.

I'm all for blaming victims of unfortunate situations...actually I'm not.

then how bout lets save the wasted text space of you pretending you have a point to make?

4 zones and over half a dozen arena venues, each one drawfs the space of the single pocket D location (which is much more frequently used as a travelling short cut than anything else).

If you condensed all pvp action to a single tiny space on each server pre i13 it would have blown pkt d population out of the water...

Also, auto lvl 40 RV pvp event destroyed the dance party.

Is there a praetorian version of you that has had a history of posting correct information rather than being wrong in every single post I've ever seen? That guy would be awesome.