A powerleveler's guide to blasters (very long)

Hmmm

Thanks for the response, given that influence is no longer an issue for me I have been able to try out your reccomendation regarding slotting all (but one) damage enhancers.

My thoughts after a few hours playing/trying still remain the same, the reason is that I have both buildup and aim slotted so that they are almost constantly available. This means that every time I start a new combat I am able use either of those to boost my damage (sometimes I will stack both depending on the con of the mobs (ie hunting small groups of orange or red mobs).

I can always 1 hit yellow minions with zapp, with buildup it is stil 2 hits on white or yellow minions even going 5 damage using Lightning Bolts & Charged bolts...

It is still early days but i will continue to try this out for the rest of lvl 34, given the lack of logging / parsing options (or have I missed something that will help?), I am having to work purely on feel but again it is the recycle time when misses are accounted for that has me most concerned, and yes I have hasten 6 slotted (& updated to ++'s when appropriate).

What do blasters do for defense against being held/disoriented/slept? I asked this question in a thread where I was looking for guidance with my Ice/Dev build but unfortunately got no response.

Soloing for me with the blaster has meant really loathing mobs that stun, and I just can't keep enough luck/discipline inspirations on hand to have them constantly going.

Thanks for a great post.
Very informative.

"I can feel the nerf bat winding up"

Yeah, I think they have been doing a fine job of rebalancing... but I also think they should not rebalance ANYTHING AT ALL before respec is put in. Doesn't matter if it is broken or not, if I build a character based on an ability that gets changed, I need to be able to change with it. This is by far the most common reason I have quit previous mmorpgs.

As far as the sleep/stun thing: I have combat jumping, which resists immob, and acrobatics, which resists hold/knockback...

BUT acrobatics costs endurance that I would rather spend defeating mobs, and you can't get protection from sleep at all. Not only that, but even popping iron wills before a fight, they still sleep me...

One of the biggest secrets to powerleveling is to CHOOSE YOUR FIGHTS. That's why superspeed is a must. Rewards are not balanced for the difficulty of an encounter. If I want to make exp, I don't fight bosses. I don't fight high level stuff. I don't fight anything that sleeps me. You run around with superspeed and choose the fights that offer the best rewards for the difficulty - you farm.

I'm really beginning to wonder whether or not the people who played in beta are just plain idiots or devious or both. Lots of beta blasters whined that they had too little HP or did too little damage and now post-release we have blasters publishing how-to guides on achieving 40 in 2 weeks.

I bet the developers looking at their data mining are shocked to see a huge discrepancy in levelling rates pre- and post-release. Either lots of beta blasters were fudging gimpness or simply never reported exploits or the developers didn't listen to the right people.

Blasters now are seriously overpowered compared to other archetypes its not even remotely funny. All of this exploit XPing and overpowered combos have got to be nipped at the bud. Its bad enough that a /whoall in any zone yields about 90% blasters, 10% everything else. Must they wait until every single player is playing a blaster?

I'm really worried about this game. The devs claim they are watching the datamining information carefully. And yet nothing has been done about fire/fire blasters getting a bub of XP at 35+ every 15 minutes. Something is wrong, the last time I earned a bub in 15 minutes as a scrapper was the low 20's. This is unacceptable, I hope they do something about this soon because the game is becoming rather silly.

I feel for ya Ren. My highest alt is a scrapper. And I know the feeling Scrappers have. Hopefully the new crit percentage they are adding in will keep the scraps happy. I kind of doubt it because there main thing is survivability not so much damage output. I would just suggest not getting all worked up about blasters being too powerful and wanting to nerf them....I would be more inclined to keep giving feedback to the devs on how to make scrappers better. There are a couple of good threads in the scrapper forum with suggestions on how to help them out. If all else fails....make a blaster alt...and you can get some good general advice from this thread....and a ton of different builds to choose from in the blaster forum.

Mezrah_FearGiver and anyone else reading this for the guiding part, there has been several threads leveling guides like this before. Here is the thread I wrote for instance:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showf...t=all&vc=1

Also seen many on the general boards and various other class boards.

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Finally, for those who are still new to the whole blaster thing, the fire blasters being an "AOE build" just means that they have just one AOE, fire ball. Very nice attack and I use it all the time, but that is the extent of their AOE superiority.

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All right I see bull [censored], let's set the record straight and include Fire Breath in there. You must be half asleep or not paying attention. Add Fire Sword Circle and Inferno for kicks.

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But the fact is that after level 10 or so, you really don't care about melee damage as much, there's very few villains that can get into melee range with you, and even fewer that have a melee attack you worry about.

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You must be still fighting Hellions then. Higher level Capo Muscles, Freak Smashers & Swipers will stun and kill you in 2 hits. I can think of more, but you obviously haven't seen higher mobs than that. Get a bit higher in level before you start making up incorrect generalizations.

Seriously, this thread should have been closed and saved at the top of the blaster forum as a guide before all this nonsense got put into it.

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I bet the developers looking at their data mining are shocked to see a huge discrepancy in levelling rates pre- and post-release. Either lots of beta blasters were fudging gimpness or simply never reported exploits or the developers didn't listen to the right people.

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Or Blasters really did suck during beta (I didn't play one) and at the end, with too little time to test, they were adjusted and improved a hair too much, with more pressing things doubtlessly coming up after release than rebalancing Blasters.

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I'm really beginning to wonder whether or not the people who played in beta are just plain idiots or devious or both. Lots of beta blasters whined that they had too little HP or did too little damage and now post-release we have blasters publishing how-to guides on achieving 40 in 2 weeks.

I bet the developers looking at their data mining are shocked to see a huge discrepancy in levelling rates pre- and post-release. Either lots of beta blasters were fudging gimpness or simply never reported exploits or the developers didn't listen to the right people.

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The developers raised Blaster hit points because Blasters were getting KO'd the most. It wasnt even close. The order went:

Tanker (defeated the least)
Scrapper
Controller
Defender
Blaster (defeated most often)

And they didnt really raise hit points that much. It was only 5-10%. Controllers got a bigger boost.

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Blasters now are seriously overpowered compared to other archetypes its not even remotely funny. All of this exploit XPing and overpowered combos have got to be nipped at the bud.

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You mean like the burn tankers exploit that was addressed or the Caltrops hold that was fixed? Or maybe Ignite? Seems to me the devs are working on things.

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Its bad enough that a /whoall in any zone yields about 90% blasters, 10% everything else. Must they wait until every single player is playing a blaster?

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Do you really think 90% of heros in the game are Blasters?

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I'm really worried about this game. The devs claim they are watching the datamining information carefully. And yet nothing has been done about fire/fire blasters getting a bub of XP at 35+ every 15 minutes. Something is wrong, the last time I earned a bub in 15 minutes as a scrapper was the low 20's. This is unacceptable, I hope they do something about this soon because the game is becoming rather silly.

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Well frankly you can't do squatto about it. Why dont you just build a fire blaster if they are SO Uber? Why be such a whiney tool and stick it out with your crappy scrapper?

Either you are having fun with your scrapper or not. If he is so frustrating that the game is becoming silly, and you know all about the exploits that make fire blasters uber you should just restart and play one. That way everything can work your way for a little while, and rather than being frustrated by the devs poor management you can take advantage of it. What are you waiting for?

"Or Blasters really did suck during beta (I didn't play one) and at the end, with too little time to test, they were adjusted and improved a hair too much, with more pressing things doubtlessly coming up after release than rebalancing Blasters. "

One to one and half weeks before the end of Beta, the Devs increased hit points of blasters to be equal to defenders (same for controllers) because the Devs ran stats that Blasters died twice as often as any other Archetype.

And just a few days before going to pre-order live, they increased Blaster damage by a %. No where was it posted how much this % increase was except that it was close to 25%-30% damage increase. I can only assume the reasoning for this was to counteract the damage output a Radiation Defender with Accelerate Met. and Envenerating Field could dish out (pre-live nerfage) to targets.

Not to mention many AE damage powers had an increase as well (i.e. Ice Breath) just before pre-live as well.

Blasters per se never really sucked during Beta but when you were as fragile as you were (pre-changes) and didn't dish out any more damage than most optimized other Archetypes, Blasters were gimpy compared to some of the others who had damage + multiple utility powers.

How in the hell can you kill swarms for 4-5 hours? That sounds insanely boring....

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How in the hell can you kill swarms for 4-5 hours? That sounds insanely boring....

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Staying focused. I could do it for maybe 2 hours before I would lose it but I know a person who did TV for 16 hours in one sitting. Not for me.

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I bet the developers looking at their data mining are shocked to see a huge discrepancy in levelling rates pre- and post-release. Either lots of beta blasters were fudging gimpness or simply never reported exploits or the developers didn't listen to the right people.

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Or Blasters really did suck during beta (I didn't play one) and at the end, with too little time to test, they were adjusted and improved a hair too much, with more pressing things doubtlessly coming up after release than rebalancing
Blasters.

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Blasters were pretty much the same. I played Defenders through most of beta but I went with a Blaster at the end once they got the HP boost. I can tell you that at the time AoE attacks were looked at as worthless by many testers since they drew so much aggro. I remember reading another post saying basically the opposite, that the whole point of being a blaster was to take advantage of big AoE affects. But my impression was that people didnt think to much of AoE. I played it out and totally disagreed.

Stuff like that happens. Stamina was once considered worthless. Geko had to defend it to the players. Now its considered a must have power. Hasten was at first considered awesome, then it was changed and it was considered useless. The power was still great, but players got it into their heads it worked one way and when that changed just cried about the difference. It didnt matter that the power was still awesome, it was different, and there were a lot of people complaining about it. So that colored a lot of players opinions on it before they even judged it on it's merits.

Honestly, a lot of what goes on these boards is colored by perception from other posts. Scrappers are crying now because they see other scrappers crying and together they all feel worthless. It's a spiral and there's really nothing the devs can do to fix it. Scrappers arent SO bad that they are unplayable. Fortunately the devs pay more attention to data mining than they do to personal opinions of the boards. The fact is that scrappers are viable right now. They may not have things as easy as Blasters, but they have it much easier than Controllers and Defenders overall. Scrappers can solo easier than either class, and soloing is better XP than grouping anyway. Scrappers just feel bad and think they arent wanted in groups. The devs can't change that. If you feel worthless there's not much that anyone can do to help.

My Blasters are leveling, but not as fast as peeps on this board. I think it has to do with enhancements. Saving and selling every enhancement in the game I get from kills/arrests, I still don't have enough to do the damage talked about in this forum (per/level meaning number of casts per mobs).
I don't have the means yet to transfer infl./money from char to char.
Alot of the fast leveling here is just smart play.
There's also some good discussion going on the tanker forum as well, peeps there too are trying to help each other out with what works and what doesn't in this game.
EQ went through the same process. A necro in that game can still out solo any other class despite numerous nerfs.
But I do hope this game doesn't turn out to be City of Gimps with all the nerfing going on.

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Blasters were pretty much the same. I played Defenders through most of beta but I went with a Blaster at the end once they got the HP boost.

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I thought they got:

1) Hp boost
2) Damage boost
3) Endurance cost cut

That's a lot of things coming together. Mind you, I'm not calling for a Blaster nerf or even remotely hinting at suggesting it, just exploring some of the reason for Blaster envy.

I think what people are looking for is City of Balance. Balance naturally includes a good mix of nerfs and buffs. As things stand now very few people could argue that Blasters by far outpace all the other archetypes in terms of levelling.

Its a combination of many things, first (in my opinion) and foremost that balanced teams do not yield the best XP as they should. But the second thing to consider is that blasters are simply so much better than scrappers.

And to the person above who asked the question why not just play a blaster? The answer is simple but probably beyond your FOTM mind to comprehend. It's because I want to play a scrapper but at the same time don't like to play an archetype that's gimped relative to Blasters. Wow, wasn't that simple!

I think the developers made a bit of mistake towards the end of beta when they added so many improvements to what was certainly already the most popular archetype with almost no beta testing. To me this seemed to be a bizzarre move and I had a feeling this may turn out to be a problem later. Lo and behold the first level 40 character came to reality in 2 weeks and he/she was a blaster. That was only the beginning, in the next few days more level 40's appeared and they were all blasters! As you can imagine this is not one of those times I enjoy getting a prediction right.

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How in the hell can you kill swarms for 4-5 hours? That sounds insanely boring....

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That is the essence of power leveling. It's certainly not everybody's thing. For the record, I can only keep it up for an hour or two, tops, before having to go on some missions or group to break the monotony.

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Blasters were pretty much the same. I played Defenders through most of beta but I went with a Blaster at the end once they got the HP boost.

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I thought they got:

1) Hp boost
2) Damage boost
3) Endurance cost cut

That's a lot of things coming together. Mind you, I'm not calling for a Blaster nerf or even remotely hinting at suggesting it, just exploring some of the reason for Blaster envy.

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Blasters always had the endurance break as far as I know. The developers never announced any reduction in Blaster endurance to my knowledge. I think it was always in their concept of the Blaster from the getgo, not an add on for balance. I noticed it right away when I made the switch from Defender to Blaster.

So the hit point boost was about 5-10% like I said. That really wasnt a big deal as it let you survive a single hit extra at the most by the time you hit the 20ish levels. The damage boost was also nothing special. Someone above posted it was 25% but it was more likely around 10% again. We didnt even notice it.

The whole point of the extra damage was to balance with DEFENDERS who were considered better in a lot of ways. You could build a defender that did comparable damage to a Blaster and had better peripheral abilities. This was what I was doing most of beta anyway and it was viable. The biggest advantage that Blasters have over Defenders (other than the unannounced endurance break) is they could put all their enhancements in attack powers while Defenders allocate to both powersets more. That and the fact that they get Build Up or Targetting Drone. So people were concerned that you could build a better Blaster using a Defender archetype. I didnt agree but try convincing Scrappers they arent gimped right now. It's like banging your head against the wall.

If someone could do a study now and see what a how lvl 20 heros hit for damage it would be interesting. Blasters use their primary set vs the Defender secondary set, so that should make for about 15% difference. Anything more than 15% would be the "extra" bonus that Blasters got. I'd be surprised it it was more than 25% total, indicating that Blaster "got" a 10% bonus at the end of beta. It should be right around 1 SO enhancement.

What a bunch of CRAP! Just cuz I am a elec/elec blaster, I am the crap of the barrell of Blasters? What a bunch of.........

HEHEHEHEHEHEHE, just kidding.

Hey man, very good post, it makes me feel like starting a hero all over again. I am a Elec/Elec blaster, and I am level 21 now. I have fun, and I do good damage, but your post makes some sense on how to do more. I am not into power leveling, just want to maximize my damage potential and this is a great guide. I am linking this on my site with your permission, as it is a great guide for any Blaster. If they take the time to read it, they will see all sorts of ways to improve thier hero.

Is it okay to link this? Just give me a reply here or PM me. Thanx.

Great post, 5 stars!!

First, should I be taking smoke grenade asap?

Second, what exactly are swarms? Is it a mob type, or just a way of saying a big group.

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If you don't take Devices, Stealth from the concealment pool is hard to pass up. Superspeed negates its speed penalty and combines with it to give basically full invisibility. Invisibility is fantastic and you get a hefty defensive boost in combat.

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Is Stealth alone enough? Or do you recommend also getting Invisibility? Is the Invisibility power just stealth with bigger % bonuses?

I'm trying to adjust my build to fit in super speed in addition to fly. Wanted to keep Stealth, Drop Invisibility for Super Speed.

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And to the person above who asked the question why not just play a blaster? The answer is simple but probably beyond your FOTM mind to comprehend. It's because I want to play a scrapper but at the same time don't like to play an archetype that's gimped relative to Blasters. Wow, wasn't that simple!

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The point is that no one is forcing you to play a scrapper. If they are SO bad, why are you playing one? Since its a choice whether to pick that archetype and continue developing it, IT CANT BE THAT BAD IF YOU KEEP PLAYING A SCRAPPER. Your actions dictate it. Are scrappers worse off than blasters? Maybe, but they arent so far off that you wont play one any more, so things arent that bad.

Get real and realize that you are just some schmoe who has very little to contribute to this game. If you think that blasters have it so easy just play one and be happy. It's like voting. If everyone would just play a blaster the devs would have to make the other archetypes better. It would be obvious in their data mining. But you keep playing a scrapper, and reinforcing with hard data that scrappers in fact arent so bad. They whine a lot on the boards because that's the scrapper mentality right now, but the data just doesnt support the kind of changes you want right now. Deal with it.

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I think the developers made a bit of mistake towards the end of beta when they added so many improvements to what was certainly already the most popular archetype with almost no beta testing.

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Were you in beta? Blasters were not the most popular by any means. Axe tankers were a big issue for much of beta, followed by Reflex scrappers which were out of hand. Then Dark Melee scrappers, and after that Fire and Illision controllers. Blasters by comparison were relatively weak. The scrappers, tankers, and controllers were constantly at the top of the charts for levelling rates and kill acheivements. If you were in beta I dont know how we have such different recollections of things, unless its because you were only in the last few days or so.

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To me this seemed to be a bizzarre move and I had a feeling this may turn out to be a problem later. Lo and behold the first level 40 character came to reality in 2 weeks and he/she was a blaster. That was only the beginning, in the next few days more level 40's appeared and they were all blasters! As you can imagine this is not one of those times I enjoy getting a prediction right.

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Just play a blaster and get over it. Seriously. I recommend this to all whiney scrappers out there. Come back to your scrapper when they "fix" everything for you.

Can we just skip the Blaster vs Scrapper talk for another thread and avoid polluting this one any further? Probably not, but worth asking.

And I love Smoke Grenade more than my Targeting Drone, which should tell you something.

Does your smoke grenade ever miss? Also, is there a point to getting both smoke grenade and cloaking device?