Thinkso

I highly doubt it. Put in perspective the number of builds and players solo'ing AV's is already tiny compared to the number of players not doing it. The AT's you listed are generally the weakest at the task for various reasons, which is automatically going to make them less likely to be selected within the tiny subset of players attempting such tasks.

Put another way, there are way more fire/kins farming than ice/emps even if the latter can still technically do it. This is because people lean toward things that can successfully complete the task in the most befitting manner. In addition to that people converge closer and closer to a singular focal point with the dispersion of information.

So you have a small group of players solo'ing AV's, that by default tends to require a fair amount of game knowledge, which leads many of them to information hubs. The information hubs are all pushing forth a similar set of recommendations.

It's why you will always have more ill/rads solo'ing AV's than warshades. 1. They are better at it. 2. people disseminate the information so others pick ill/rads.

Anyway to the thread in general: there is a difference between obsolete and extinct. Saying (for instance) that tankers are obsolete now that brutes are available everywhere is not the same thing as saying tanks will never be played again.

Personally I don't think any AT is obsolete, but several are sitting on the fence and could go either way with just minor game changes. But again obsolete =! extinct.

Very true. The thing that holds MM heavy teams back when it comes to speed of completion is their low movement speed. All else being equal they move at least twice as slow in a steamrolling scenario between mobs. They can kill as fast as anything really, and the power they have on tap tends to wipe everything in the blink of an eye just like other offensive powerhouse configurations. However, the disparity in time spent travelling to the next group certainly adds up.

Specifically though for my last post I was deviating away from reward rate and focusing solely upon damage delivery in the physical sense of just how much of a profound affect forcemultiplication can have.

There are certianly compelling factors that would prevent most teams from seeking a high number of MM's when they wouldn't shy away from a high number of defs/corrs/trollers.

edit: of course in many MM focused teams the pace ends up being set around the MM(s), especially if the other members are soft like blasters. So w/e advantage the faster movement rate the blaster brings ends up evaporating because they aren't strong enough to lead the charge in many situations. For clarity, that isn't necessarily the blasters fault, they get full points for being fast, but again hover at the bottom of the totem for survivability, which can sometimes be more of a factor than the ability to move rapidly. Just depends.

Well yes and no. A second kin adds another speedboost to everyone. So now you need to compare everyone on the team with an additional 50% recharge and cycling all of their powers faster against the contribution of that single blaster. I personally wouldn't put my money on the blaster being the bigger net gain if we assume they both use the same attack set.

But yes kins (and especially FF) can become fairly redundant pretty quickly simply because the values they bring individually are so very close to the max value a team needs.

The sets that improve team speed via -res (which in the case of MM's is all of them except FF) tend to keep stacking all the way up to a full team without petering out.

If we say that a defender does 40% of the damage of an individual blaster (bit generous to the blaster there) and we look at a very simplified case of everyone using an aoe attack (40 dam for def and 100 dam for blaster) and each defender with a -res power.
8 Blasters = 8*100 = 800
1 def+ 7 blasters = (40+(7*100))*1.3 = 962
4 def + 4 blasters = ((40*4)+(4*100))*2.2 = 1232
6 defs+ 2 blasters = ((6*40)+(2*100)*2.8 = 1232
7 defs + 1 blasters = ((7*40)+100))*3.1 = 1178
8 Defs = (40*8)*3.4 = 1088

So if we generously state that blasters do 2.5X as much damage with each attack than a defender (they are at ~1.75X base, so aim, bu, defiance may take it up to 2.5X...maybe). And we ignore everything else of value that the debuff set is likely bringing to the team the convergence point of when it becomes 'better' to add a blaster instead of a another defender is somewhere around the point that your team is looking to fill the last one or two spots.

In this case though, we haven't been making specific note of defenders doing too much damage relative to blasters. One can only hope that the lowest damage AT in the game doesn't infringe on what is supposed to be the highest damage class. However, MM's do a lot more damage than defenders (which hopefully no one will contest). MM's don't debuff quite as well as defs when it comes to -res, but at the same time they also aren't that far behind.

If we accept such a simplified model demonstrating that the point a pure damage toon like a blaster becomes of value is in the last spots on a forcemultiplying team of low damage AT's, that point of convergence is unlikely to every occur in the case of MM's and blasters.

Plant and Earth.

I look at it this way. Plant is so strong it doesn't even take its aoe sleep which is identical to mass hypnosis including not doing any damage, except for the mob notify (which is really only an issue on the LRSF).

Earth is...well I don't even know what to say about earth, it just controls on a different level than anything else.

Mind is by far the best control set if you just want to pause the game. If you want to actually kill things both mass hyp and terrify have very large drawbacks which leave the set leaning more heavily on total dom and massconfuse. Both of which are 240 sec powers. Nothing wrong with that if you have high recharge, but neither plant nor earth need to cycle in their 240 sec uber aoe controls, so they both have them in the bank if things go wrong.

Additionally mind is parasitic to doing personal damage because you often need to layer the aoe controls to manage a single spawn (earth is a bit guilty of this by usually putting down the quicksand carpet, though it is not required of the set) that directly equates to less opportunity to use your own attacks. Also the lack of a pet(s) contributing damage. Yes confuse is a nice source of damage, but plant has better confuse, a pet, and carrion creepers resulting in heaps of damage.

Last but not least, all of minds control powers are nearly indecipherable in a busy team. You may well be making a difference, but no one will be able to visually confirm it on screen like they can with carrion creepers whipping about, or the whole spawn shaking from an earthquake.

Again, mind is a great set. I have a mind/fire, mind/thorn, and mind/kin all at 50 and I would never say any of them are weak, but my earth/fire is stronger in a team (excluding one single encounter), my plant/thorn controls better and does a lot more damage than the mind/thorn, and my plant/kin is just godlike while the mind/kin struggles to find the role it excels at.

Anyway, that's just my experiences with the various directly comparable combos that I've played. I know people revere mind on these forums, so I may well be doing it wrong, but at the same time I've taken the time to learn every crazy TK trick out there and the rest of the set is very straightforward. I also took the time to learn how to get contained damage on both terrify and fireball after using masshyp on the troller, which I haven't seen many other people capable of pulling off. I'm certainly willing to accept that I could improve with mind though, however with less practice and effort both earth and plant get more mileage for me. But ymmv.

You are quite right. No one likes to feel trivialized and MM's are among the most egregious offenders when it comes to making other players feel unneeded. Many of them remind me of pre nerf shield in some ways. It's like, "hey you can follow me around while I do everything." "oh did you guys do something over there? I didn't notice while I killed all these multiple spawns by myself".

Fun enough when you are the one with the spotlight on you I suppose. Not so much fun when you are back in the shadows.

But like I said earlier, to fix blasters most people wouldn't like the results because I highly doubt it would be a pure buff scenario.

This is also true. At most a blaster ends up gaining 40-80ft by the end of the mission compared to a melee AT if one needs to go all the way to the final area. Even if the scrapper is using walk to make up that difference the time advantage the blaster gains is trivial and insignificant. In actuality even the slowest moving AT (MM's) can cover that distance disparity in mere seconds.

There was nothing in that post that warranted a response, but if you really want me to get into it:
-He points out the large survivability disparity accompanied by a minor damage disparity.
-He says his blasters, scrappers, and brutes solo a bit faster. Which is fine considering brutes and scrappers have been dragged out in this thread already as doing too much damage relative to blasters
-He talks about the aoe damage of the blaster in a full team, but seems unaware that someone that casts a -res debuff is responsible for everyone's increase in damage. It only takes a tiny bit of forcemeultiplication to eclipse a single damage dealer's contribution in a team. (if you require a detailed explanation just ask, I'll happily explain).
-He points out that a fearless blaster is probably more destructive than a bots/traps, but a bots/traps is always fearless against virtually anything this game offers. I know my bots/traps and bots/storm can wipe out +2/8 mobs faster than the aoe missles can cycle (roughly 20 seconds). I've only seen the most pimped out arch blasters match that kind of speed and they crumble as difficulty increases, while both of those MM's can survive against just about anything the game has to offer.

If you aren't going to read what I'm saying then I might not continue extending you that courtesy.
I'm beginning to think you might not understand how the game works. If the mastermind wasn't there putting out the debuff the Blaster would not benefit from it. Therefore the blaster is not doing anything extra for the team without the MM's abilities. This is forcemultiplication.

It's not "I'm awesome and some guy was using some funny looking rain power while I cleaned house". It's "I'm awesome BECAUSE of the funny looking rain"

I get that people that only look at the size of the orange numbers have trouble with understanding the difference. That isn't meant to be mean, lots of people still think broadsword is the ultimate because of the large orange numbers despite most sets surpassing its damage output.
You still stuck on blasters being a ranged damage AT? At any rate you want to make this a black and white discussion. I realize it is way easier for you to have a leg to stand on if I'm saying blasters are teh suck. I haven't said that though.
Ok, show me the point this happens because I don't believe you know what you are talking about. It can happen when comparing something that starts as low as a defender to a blaster, but even then it happens pretty late in the team additions. I'm not convinced that point of convergence is crossed with something that starts with as much damage potential as a MM AND forcemultiplies.
So the blaster is slotted for range enhancement or /em yes? Otherwise neither. Or the blaster could use what amounts to some of the worst attacks in the game - snipes - from that range.
What if there is more than one and by the time you've killed one the others are now around you beating on you? Who wins then? What settings are you on where you only ever face 1 enemy at a time?
ok, if you say so. I mean you are wrong, but ok.
I haven't. I can't speak for AF, but I don't think he has either.
The evidence we have does not support this position. But be sure to send out a memo that any blaster that doesn't use hover 100% of the time and skip all melee range attacks is playing the AT wrong.
The only time I ever used my MM to farm was when all boss farms were still available. I ran them at +2/8. It was easy, boring, and fast, just like all farming tends to be. Otherwise I wouldn't farm 'normal' maps with my MM because the difficulty isn't high enough and their between mob speed is way too slow. I prefer to use 'farm settings' (+1-2/8) and just run normal content with them. I still breeze through malta and carnies at roughly the same speed I'd breeze through council because the survivability threshold of the AT is so high that the mob type is largely irrelevant. I also greatly prefer to encounter EB's and AV's in my missions as opposed to running with bosses off like the two blaster farm builds do.

FWIW I pretty much copied Frosticus' bots/storm/mu build that sits at #2 for pylon kill speed and IME the single target damage is actually not the highlight of that toon. It wipes out entire spawns in mere seconds. I have a heavily pimped (multi-billion) fire/em/ice blaster that can kill spawns about as fast, but the difference is the MM build (which is way cheaper too) doesn't care about what faction the enemy is, what powers they have, or if there are any bosses. Heck anything short of an AV standing in the spawn generally doesn't cause a hiccup in pace. The blaster can't say the same. In fact I was able to turn my difficulty up to 0/8 at lvl 20 with that MM and never looked back. Not only that, but the MM can keep an entire team alive through a combination of tanking spawns/absorbing alphas as necessary, drastically reducing enemy capabilities with the storm debuffs, and greatly increase overall team kill speed through offensive debuffs.

That blaster is like a gocart with a rocket booster on the back. It can do one thing and one thing well. The MM is like a Bugatti Veyron and will do everything as well as the gocart and will also do just about everything else imaginable except tow your RV. And if in this analogy the 'RV' is the group of players around you it will also tow your RV...

Nope. I don't really care that MM's can standup to AV's beyond the fact that it demonstrates their ability to easily handle most content similar to a toon that can kill a pylon.

MM's rip through content. All MM's (well I haven't tried /ff, but I've done every primary and/or secondary besides that one to ~40). The only thing that used to slow MM's down was that you had to summon and individually buff all pets at the start of each mission. Both those factors are gone and as a result MMs can clear solo missions among the fastest and safest in the game.

Reward rate is a direct indicator of your ability to deliver damage. The ability to deliver damage is a function of several factors including, but not limited to: damage output, survivability, and movement speed.

We know MM's are the overall slowest moving AT. We know they are 10's or even 100's of times more survivable than blasters. Yet even in missions where survivability isn't stressed they can still clear enemies +/- as fast as a blaster*

*something like a merc/ta is probably slower than a fire/elec when survivability is not a factor, but a nin/storm is way faster than an elec/dev. When survivability enters the equation like the type of situation where a blaster would like to leverage their high target aoe's a MM is often considerably better at successfully delivering damage. Additionally the fastest MM (on SO's or IO's) is faster than the fastest blaster outside of cherrypicking the absolute easiest mobs available.

I seriously doubt the intent of most posters is to belittle people that have made the choice to use FF. However, if a FF user wants to be stubborn and proclaim how awesome it is, I see nothing wrong with someone pointing out what cold does better.

Anyway, what better way would you suggest to get FF attention than comparing it to its closest analog and pointing out where it falls short and where it excels?

It worked great for Fire Armor in the thread comparing it to Shields. Not only was a serious multi-stage dev oversight corrected with shield charge, but fire was shown to be lacking in its role as an 'offensive armor set' and received a couple great buffs.

It is very difficult to demonstrate that anything is under performing to the point of needing dev attention as a standalone because players don't have access to the datamining that is needed (Not including the countless bugged powers that require fixing). What we can do however, is clearly compare and contrast similar sets and hope that raises a flag.

Not even remotely what I was talking about, but ok.

Blasters are a DAMAGE AT, as denoted by the devs. Their role is to do damage and they are given various attacks that do such. Some are ranged, some are melee. They are also given some utility powers to help them achieve that role.

List a scrapper attack that uses their ranged modifier.
Neat. Have you ever looked at blaster melee attacks? Take a close look at the DS values of them compared to similar attacks found in other AT's. ie Havoc punch is a decidedly different beast than it is for brutes/tanks/doms and it has practically nothing to do with their damage modifier.
But you didn't actually SAY anything. You just listed two combos and said "see impossible!". It's no where near impossible, it isn't even difficult. So just throwing your hands up in the air and proclaiming that the gods themselves couldn't resolve this issue is humorous. I suppose.
This is sig worthy. Oh well it is very apparent that you aren't on the same page. I mean the description you quoted next actually counters your statement about it being a "ranged AT" and yet you still stand by it.

I think what is happening is the hyperbolic statement you made as your first sentence is what people actually see Cold supporters as saying even though such a statement has not been made by anyone. I'm not necessarily saying you believe your own statement, but your final sentence suggests your 'hyperbole' may be what you are reading into the messages.

Basically there is nothing to debate/argue unless one casts the people supporting Cold as vehement, frothing at the mouth FF haters. Regardless of the fact that it isn't true in the least.

You either didn't read what I said or didn't understand my statement. I at no point implied either directly or indirectly that redraw should be removed from the game or that it is a feasible request.

I did state that making a version of WAWG that shoots from the mace and is mutually exclusive from the version that shoots from the gun IS easy to do.

If a Bane (or huntsman) could pick versions of the powers that all use the same drawn weapon the amount of redraw they experience will decline drastically.

If it is doing damage at a similar clip to any blaster then it is indeed infringing on the blasters territory. That would be fine if devices had some way of increasing passive defense to a similar degree as shields. Heck it might even be ok if devices had a way of increasing active defense to similar levels that shields obtains...but it doesn't.

It isn't at all difficult to balance. The difficulty arises because it has been allowed to persist for years. Invoking change is difficult, but balancing blasters isn't a challenge. Some people just wouldn't like the results because I highly doubt they would just increase blaster capability and call it a day.
Blasters are not classified as "ranged damage" you'll find no such developer support for that premise and you'll find no such player support for that premise from anyone that understands this game. Blasters are classified as "damage". There is no distance modifier attached to the AT. Unless you are categorically claiming that blasters that take and use melee range abilities are using the AT incorrectly?

Anyway, your example of a /dev mining a group to death is perfect to illustrate the problem a lot of people have when trying to understand this game.

The two main factors are risk vs reward and reward vs time. But it is more accurately described as Risk vs Reward vs Rate as opposed to two separate functions

A /dev dropping mines and pulling things in to them is the epitome of zero risk + full reward. It is countered by the fact that it is in all likelihood the single slowest method of earning reward in this game as long as we accept that actually completing the encounter via other methods can be accomplished (which it always can, but is important to understand the basic requirement for the statement).

As long as the reward rate is below that of methods that incur more risk then it doesn't matter if it is some risk or no risk really because it still plots lower than the other methods. Now if you had a scenario where the reward rate was being inflated like the old Boss farms in AE then you have an issue where the reward rate needs to be cut and/or the risk needs to be increased. In this case the devs opted to do both.

Expanding that back to /dev if the blaster could lay mines and then defeat spawns faster than other methods that incur more risk then your original point would hold true. However, that isn't the case.

Personally I love doms, they are very flexible in their roles and bring much value to most teams. They have the best inherent in the game and they scale well in teams, in various situations, and with investment.

Blasters are a remnant of the 'holy trinity' design principle and as such they don't hold up as well under scrutiny in this game that drives hard to break that mold. Doms are how blasters should have been originally implemented in this game.

On the other hand I don't hate blasters and for clarity I haven't seen anyone say they hate blasters, so it would be nice if people stopped proclaiming that. I find blasters to be pretty fun, but I have the objective ability to discern between fun and quantifiable power. Blasters are fun, but not nearly as powerful as they should be relative to what other AT's are allowed to do with SO's all the way up to IO's and anywhere in between.

I try to prevent my subjective feelings from impacting my objective understanding of things. Not everyone can do that.

It's really that good. It lacks popularity because it matures so late and doesn't provide a much survivability to the caster as some other sets (especially rad and dark).

It isn't out of line though.
Cold - squishy with little self protection, but you are able to make your team phenomenal defensively and offensively
Rad and Dark - huge amounts of personal protection/survivability and still make the team very strong offensively and defensively.
FF - unparalleled personal survivability, makes the team very mitigative, but lacks the ability to increase offense.

And so forth. Each buff/debuff set has a niche that it excels at (well except TA).

But if the specific question is what set makes a team shine under more scenarios, the answer is Cold > FF.

If the question were, what set makes a team very defensively strong while also ensure that I the caster never dies, the answer is FF > Cold.

8 of any buff/debuff sets in this game are crazy strong. It is more that Cold mixes in better with other buff/debuff sets than most others because it does everything well. It is strong enough to stand on it's own, but regardless of what the team is running with Cold will still bring a lot of value.