Statesman, issue with your position on blasters

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I'm still waiting for you tell me where I said they should scale up.

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One would imagine that since the only "nerf" to blaster damage (in reality damage dealers of all sorts) looming is the increase in minion HP. That there might be an inference in your statements about how your only defense is your offense isn't outside the bounds of reason. It's only after more than 15 pages do you speak about increasing defensive/utility potential through seconds.

Now to be fair, you have not outright said it, but my statement doesn't require you, or anyone to say it. I can present that opinion independent of anyone. So again, if you don't disagree, why are you giving me a hard time about it?

Since the only talk of aoe changes is the dominance of it in the game, no specifics have been declared about reducing the actual base damage levels or anything.

Your stance is that if they nerf your "damage" you're quitting as it would remove your ability to solo.

I'm still waiting for you to show me where the nerfs are. You say proposed changes, but proposed by who? The worried blasters?

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Volleys from things that take lethal damage don't score damage on you. Several times I drop things and then their attack goes off. . .and I lose no health despite their weapon firing or their ball of fire landing.

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I am specifically speaking of my ATs (AR) AoEs which are all ticks. Flamethrower, Full Auto. Long animation times and tick damage. Thus they always get a volley off on my AoE.

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Fair enough. That is a drawback with DoTs, ostensibly balanced by them tending to do more damage.

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And again you are presuming we have a tanker with an AoE taunt or a controller in my group.

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No, I'm presuming you've made a group that contains more than Blasters.

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Do you really want to go down the path of EQ and say that every group must have 1 of each AT to suceed?

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No, but it doesn't take 1 of each AT to succeed. You could have had a Controller or a Defender, or even certain builds of Scrapper. What type of group were you in that had none of these?

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If you want to go down that path fine. But I've been in that world and I don't like it.

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Red herring.

I'm still waiting for you to point out that statement where I said my AoE damage should scale up with minion hit points.


Show me that or admit that I never said any such thing and we can move on.

If not this conversation ends with the realization that you made brash responses to my statements without actually reading what I was saying in the first place.

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No, but it doesn't take 1 of each AT to succeed. You could have had a Controller or a Defender, or even certain builds of Scrapper. What type of group were you in that had none of these?


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Doesn't matter, any group composition should be viable in my opinion, as well as soloing all the way to 50 if that is your preference.

8 blasters
8 defenders
8 tankers
8 scrappers
8 controllers

or any combination thereof should be able to do the majority of the content. I don't have time to formulate a specific group plan when I log for a few hours. I want to get in and get playing and that's what made this game fun for me as opposed to my previous experience with EQ where giant raids had to be formed and preplanned and meticulously thought out. No, this CoH was more jump right in and action based and it appealed to me. I don't want that appeal to go away.

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Can anyone name a zone where you get spawns of only 2-3 minions at 35+? No? Alrighty then. Lets not even talk about the problems AR/Dev have with Lethal resistance...

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Founders Falls.

I frequently see single warwolves or a vamp + 2 minions or 2-4 minions etc.

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Making mobs tougher and making our AOE weaker

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Never said exactly this. My hope is that making mobs tougher ALONE would bring AOE damage into line. But, I'm still researching different methods to solving this problem.

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Statesman, why is AOE damage a problem? Since blasters have the most fragile health-defense status (hope no one argues with this obvious statement) in the game, shouldn't our damage be the tradeoff?

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No, but it doesn't take 1 of each AT to succeed. You could have had a Controller or a Defender, or even certain builds of Scrapper. What type of group were you in that had none of these?


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Doesn't matter, any group composition should be viable in my opinion, as well as soloing all the way to 50 if that is your preference.[/QUOTE]

Any group composition IS viable, just not equally in all situations.

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8 blasters
8 defenders
8 tankers
8 scrappers
8 controllers

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Each has their merits and their weak points and you have to play to those if you want to do well or you have to adjust your group. Your choice.

There's more than one way to encourage grouping. I can only assume the changes made to enemy HP and powers were an attempt to get more blasters LFT. Why? I think Badges and the exempler system are a much better way to encourage grouping, and more should be done in that vein.Encouraging diffrent ATs to group shouldnt have to ruin soloing.

Oh yeah, Ive only just started playing a blaster after the update so my personal experiance is pre level 12 <if that discredits my opinion...meh>. But the frustrations I have are sucking the fun out of the game, putting me in a sour mood even when I switch over to my alts. The fix to mission difficulty will help, but if any battle is going to be some drawn out hit and run nightmare that feels anything but heroic something needs to be fixed <maybe a boost to single target damage across the AT>.

This is mostly coming from a solo perspective, but living a bit longer in teams might lower the amount of "wheres my healing/stupoid blaster" arguments that seem to pop up <usually around the end of the first posi TF mission >.

I just have to add...to all the posters reading this thread thinking it would be great to post a one line admition of their lack of wit, don't. Your only hurting the validity of good points brought up by the OP and others.

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3 points

1. A scrapper has FAR less a risk of being "skewered" then a blaster. It really tickles me when your friendly neighborhood regen scrapper who is practically invicible to the same groups that cut a blaster in half in a matter of seconds tries to say that he takes such great risks.

2. Controller same. I see Fire Controllers barreling through group after group without breaking a sweat. Fire Controller soloing is neither time consuming nor dangerous.

3. Device blasters can still solo without smoke grenade. Not quite at Scrapper level safety (and yes Smoke Grenade provided nothing more then the level of Protection that an SR scrapper enjoys) but still good.

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At level 26, no way.

1. regen scrapper doesn't have IH yet

2. controller doesn't have pets yet

3. don't know

At level 32 though, it's a different story. The thing that many are forgetting is how long it takes. My 31 BS/Regen can solo level 34 Rikti, in medium groups (5-7), but I will be using some inspirations and it will take me 5 minutes. The problem with Blasters is that they can't survive 5 minutes head to head.

But if you take your time, hit and run, throw an attack and bail, sneak back around to throw another, you know, tactics, then how do you fair?

This is actually a serious question, not a troll or flame. I hear many blasters say they will suck with the changes and many say they won't. My suspicion is that the ones who don't think the changes will be that devistating are the ones who are already using tactics, hit and run, etc... while the ones who are really, really upset are not.

So, can anyone who is an AoE blaster, who is still soloing groups of 7-10 0/+1/+2 in under 5 minutes let us know how they are managing, while some others claim that can't even fight groups of blues?

Ok my point was this COH is a team based game like it or not and it should be that way. In the current game there is a lack of damage dealers willing to team due to the fact that XP system was (pre-issue 2) bias in favor of blasters and scrappers. Given this is the blaster area i will address them 1st. Yes blasters were to strong pre issue 2. Yes you should have the ablity to solo, but solo XP should never be more than XP for a well working team pre issue 2 this was the the case for blasters. Yes it is more work to get a team and make it work, this is why teams should generate more xp/min than soloing. This is also why all the AT's have weakness. (IMPORTANT) IF YOU NEVER WANT TO TEAM I THINK YOU WOULD BE BETTER OFF PLAYING DOOM III. It will be a much more rewarding game for you. I fail to understand the idea of soloing to lvl 50, can some one explain the point of this to me? Yes now and then i solo it's fun no team work needed i don't have to talk to anyone sit back and kill small (3 or less) groups of even lvl con's and it takes me forever and i have to use alot of tactics hit and run pulling into water flying above ranged attacks and hitting back but i can do it it's ment to be hard. Now a word on soloing i took my emp/psy def out last night to see just how hard they had made it. using NONE of my primary powers a was able to solo 3 +1 minions it took a long time and i came close to death twice but i could do it. if i can do this with 40% less dam than a blaster i am sure you guys can still solo. BTW i have only hover 6 sloted for def and have the same HP as a blaster. My point is this COH is a game about teams thus the online aspect of it. Why the outcry over this issue and some blurry coment by statesman. You still have your place in the team only solo play was really effected. As to the whole team getting stunned even with clear mind yes this does happen once and a while but not nearly as often as with out it. ok i am done now.

No, we're not going to explain to you why someone should be able to solo, for that answer you should ask Cryptic since they themselves advertised the game as such. Stop trying to force players into a box of what you like and accept that others might like something different.

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(IMPORTANT) IF YOU NEVER WANT TO TEAM I THINK YOU WOULD BE BETTER OFF PLAYING DOOM III.

[/ QUOTE ]

I love this all or nothing attitude some people have towards solo vs. teaming.
After playing with a less than perfect group its nice to solo a bit to blow off steam, work off debt.Or how bout this, 5 of the seven days Im on I cant play for very long. I team on the weekends, doing TFs, hunting hazard zones, ect. On the weekdays I try to get a mission done before I log.
Why make playing with anything less than two hours to kill impossible?
The point is if you make soloing too difficult your not just alienating people youll never group with, your weakening any potential team you might join, because solo/teaming people like me wont be here any longer <and I rock at this game, you will definitly miss me >

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what did I do to draw the aggro? Attack. which is what I'm supposed to do. and do you seriously expect me to wait around for a radiation defender every damn time I want to play? I think you need to take a look at player demographics. On protector I've run into maybe 2 oir 3 Rad defenders. My Super team is loaded with defenders.... not a single one of them rad defenders.

Besides like I said. semantics. I've been one shotted by all of those things and yes on teams.... where was the defender?

Busy helping other players, missing with the targeted heal effect that steals from mobs, stunned like me, mezzed like me, dead before me, out of endurance... and in some cases just plain incompetent.

You're living in a fantasy world.

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I agree 100%. The real world (described above) is where the rest of us live. I think the issue here is that you don't feel needed in a group. Why don't you address the issue in the defender forum by asking for bonuses to your powers instead of messing with blasters and being a nerf-[censored]?

I would fully support most bonuses for defenders. Quit with the AT envy already. You sound like a bunch of whiny 5 year olds who need a nap.

-AZ

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This is actually a serious question, not a troll or flame. I hear many blasters say they will suck with the changes and many say they won't. My suspicion is that the ones who don't think the changes will be that devistating are the ones who are already using tactics, hit and run, etc... while the ones who are really, really upset are not.

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Dropping a tripmine and SS/SJing away to avoid the alpha strike is just barely classifiable as "tactics" and is only available to Devices secondary. It's certainly not a fun way to play a blaster and has no skill involved. Being unable to survive an alpha strike from even blue or white minions as well as being able to be easily 1 or 2-shotted when fighting in a group makes for a very unsatisfying game experience.

Blasters get statused easily, die easily even with their toggles up, but even easier with them down, and simply don't have the tools to effectively deal with grouping or soloing without incurring significant debt or fighting very low cons. This is most evident in the AR/devices build, but is present in all builds to some degree. Both my blasters are 35+ so I'm not talking out my [censored].

Anyhow, I've given up on blasting for at least the time being... Yes, I can solo weak stuff with TM with my AR/dev blaster or kill stuff with nova every few min with my Energy blaster and still slowly plod through the levels...I can even eventually gain exp even with the dying that I do in a group. But it's just not fun anymore.

Call me a FoTM all you want, but I'm playing a scrapper now...I was a blaster because I liked their ability to solo and group well. Now they do neither particularly well and hunting with my friends just leaves me feeling stupid every time I die.

My new scrapper (SK'd til I can catch up a bit) can get right up there with my fire/axe tanker friend and dish out some nice damage as well as take a bit too. It's not the concept I wanted to play as, but at least it allows me to have fun with my friends again.

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It doesn't work that way. We should all be independant heroes who just take specializations. My blaster should be defined by the fact he likes to engage at long range, and builds all his powers that way. I wish we'd all start at the same stats--same HPs, same basic skills--and start working from there, and never really get as far from center as we do. It just ends up making us half of a superhero.

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This is by far the best expression of what this game should be. It sums up, in one short paragraph, everything that concerns me about changes to the game.

I hope the devs read this and realize that this is the direction they should be heading with the game.

5 stars for you.

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Making mobs tougher and making our AOE weaker

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Never said exactly this. My hope is that making mobs tougher ALONE would bring AOE damage into line. But, I'm still researching different methods to solving this problem.

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Two worlds, DAMAGE CAP. An AoE ability should not do the same damage it does to 20 mobs that it does to 200 of them. At some point you have to call it enough. Do yer datamining and put a damage cap so after certian amounts of mobs, your damage will start to scale down. Until and unless you do this, AoE abilities will always be outright better than single target.

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Despite the repeated assertion, I can't recall ever seeing a Blaster kicked from a group for not dealing sufficient damage. For being reckless, yes. For being a jerk, yes. But for not using his AE as soon as possible? Never. For picking when it is best to take a shot? Nope.

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Saw it twice and did it thrice (that is 3 times). I guess we all have different experiences and just because you have not seen it does not mean it hasn't happened. If a blaster is not contributing to the team by throwing their strongest attacks then I give them a warning first and the boot next. Same with any other ATs (controllers who don't hold, tanks who don't provoke/taunt/aggro, defenders who don't buff/debuff, scrappers who don't jump into the fight). Might seem harsh but it is not fair to the rest of the team to let someone leech XP.

If you are a fire blaster and use only your single target attacks and get kicked from the team it was probably me kicking you. Play your AT to it's fullest or find a different team. I have quit plenty of teams because they would not get rid of leeches as well. Go join one of them.

-AZ

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Making mobs tougher and making our AOE weaker

[/ QUOTE ]

Never said exactly this. My hope is that making mobs tougher ALONE would bring AOE damage into line. But, I'm still researching different methods to solving this problem.

[/ QUOTE ]

Two worlds, DAMAGE CAP. An AoE ability should not do the same damage it does to 20 mobs that it does to 200 of them. At some point you have to call it enough. Do yer datamining and put a damage cap so after certian amounts of mobs, your damage will start to scale down. Until and unless you do this, AoE abilities will always be outright better than single target.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think rather than nerfing AoE you should look more into nerfing herding. If mobs were not able to be herded into group of 200 then that crap wouldn't happen. Don't nerf the ability to do a small mob on the ability of some min maxing powerlevelers clever way to make his xp gain exponentially more efficient. This is the very root of nerfs and why they tick casual players off so damn much. The powerleveler will just find the next trick in the book and the casual player is left sucking wind.

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what did I do to draw the aggro? Attack. which is what I'm supposed to do. and do you seriously expect me to wait around for a radiation defender every damn time I want to play? I think you need to take a look at player demographics. On protector I've run into maybe 2 oir 3 Rad defenders. My Super team is loaded with defenders.... not a single one of them rad defenders.

Besides like I said. semantics. I've been one shotted by all of those things and yes on teams.... where was the defender?

Busy helping other players, missing with the targeted heal effect that steals from mobs, stunned like me, mezzed like me, dead before me, out of endurance... and in some cases just plain incompetent.

You're living in a fantasy world.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree 100%. The real world (described above) is where the rest of us live. I think the issue here is that you don't feel needed in a group. Why don't you address the issue in the defender forum by asking for bonuses to your powers instead of messing with blasters and being a nerf-[censored]?

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I've called for a Blaster nerf somewhere? My Defender plays just fine and I'm quite comfortable with its desirability in groups, but thank you for the failed attempt at psychoanalysis.


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I would fully support most bonuses for defenders. Quit with the AT envy already. You sound like a bunch of whiny 5 year olds who need a nap.

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Why should I have AT envy when I play members of every AT?

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At level 32 though, it's a different story. The thing that many are forgetting is how long it takes. My 31 BS/Regen can solo level 34 Rikti, in medium groups (5-7), but I will be using some inspirations and it will take me 5 minutes. The problem with Blasters is that they can't survive 5 minutes head to head.

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Must be nice. I would be killed in their initial volley if I tried this. Since XP increases by roughly 50% with each level the enemy is above you that would yield 3 times the XP I could get hunting white Rikti and 4 times blues (since they are worht about half what a white is). I mention those since anything stronger kills me.

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But if you take your time, hit and run, throw an attack and bail, sneak back around to throw another, you know, tactics, then how do you fair?

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Assuming you mean 5-7 reds (1 LT, no boss) as you mentioned above:
31 Fire blaster - dead
29 AR blaster - dead

Assuming 5-7 whites (1 LT, no boss):
31 Fire - dead 1 out of 20 fights
29 AR - dead 1 out of 10 fights

Been spending much time in Brickstown and Independence Port since I can't solo in hazard zones anymore) testing my new (much lower) limits. I have not tried to fight a boss since the first day of the update when I died twice against different yellow bosses (that is 1 level below). Chain holds both times.

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This is actually a serious question, not a troll or flame. I hear many blasters say they will suck with the changes and many say they won't. My suspicion is that the ones who don't think the changes will be that devistating are the ones who are already using tactics, hit and run, etc... while the ones who are really, really upset are not.

So, can anyone who is an AoE blaster, who is still soloing groups of 7-10 0/+1/+2 in under 5 minutes let us know how they are managing, while some others claim that can't even fight groups of blues?

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I can still solo a group of white minions (assuming they have no stuns/holds) up to 10 with no problem. +1 is more difficult but I just hit 2-3 defense before or 2-3 heals during (i.e. 1 shot, heal, 2nd shot, heal, 3rd shot, heal, run) and I am usually ok. Add in a LT and it is totally different. I cannot even hunt blues in DA anymore now because of the chain stuns that shamans do. Bosses are now virtually impossible unless I have pink insps.

I think the difference has more to do with the composition of the enemy group that anything else. It is really hard to find groups of only minions (I see maybe 2-3 per hour in BT and FF). That does not make for very quick leveling.

-AZ

Thanks for the reply. I'm thinking that the changes in issue 2 have caught many people flatfooted due to the increase in stuns and mob tactics. I know when I first played my Rad/Rad fender after issue 2, at first I was happy. Things didn't seem too changed and I was whupping up on things as usual. Then I began dying. Chain stuns were nailing me hard. I wasn't prepared because they hadn't been there before.

I hung her up for 2 weeks and played other toons, made some new ones, got used to the changes, played a few Blasters even. Last night I played her again. I had learned from playing alts, I was more prepared. I knew to run sooner, to eat a brain chicklet, to pick away at the edges of a crowd, all of the things that I didn't have to do before.

After 3 hours, I was out of debt and happy again.

I hope that in a few weeks you will take your Blasters out for a run. That you will use what you know about the changes to make playing them fun again. If this doesn't happen for you, then you have my sympathies. 35 levels of play is a long time to just have to hang it up.

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My evidence is that I'm out every night in a group team with Blasters who aren't dying in droves like is being portrayed here. They stay alive and I know how my group works. Hmmm, if our Blasters live and you're not. . . .


[/ QUOTE ]

Three problems;

1) That is not evidence of what I was talking about at all (soloing);
2) That is *percisely* what other AT's don't want to have happen to them (forced teaming)
3) That is only within certain groups, tending towards very specific power-buffed groups. ie: Mandatory class selection.

If your support for this system is to make us group, then what is utterly unfair is that blasters were turned from soloers (which is why I made my blaster - I have extremely erratic gaming schedules, from 5 minutes to 5 hours, randomly interrupted) into support, then you have destroyed the class that people built on.

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I'd say they are no longer overwhelmingly superior units in a group and have had their soloability dropped into line with where others are, but the basic idea is the same.


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False. Tankers and scrappers... and even to some degree, controllers (though that pet change... erg) have higher survival and are now in line with the speed to kill... that is, the time it takes us to find a group we can handle. Had this discussion with 30+ scrappers all the time many times over now... and tankers and scrappers are still being improved upon. SR aside, they are almost universally better than the best max/min blaster out there. As I note below, in the trial;

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So you went sidekicked into a group situation with a lopsided group and died on a mission designed to be specifically extra hard. How is this indicative of more than questionable planning?


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False. This was the first successful group I had. I failed 3 times on test, 4 times on live first. I did it with my own blaster, with an energy blaster and a fire blaster, in groups of 4 to 8... Friends couldn't do it either... the amount of failures standing outside TV caused crashes on launch night. yet, we four completed it without breaking (their) sweat.

This was, ironically, the optimal build. This was all on the 'extra hard' at release one too.

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The mission is known to be more than run of the mill and that should suggest covering all bases not just loading up with damage classes that have no ability to deal with several of the challenges that you'd normally find on a mission let alone the challenges an extra hard mission is guaranteed to bring.


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Percisely true. Blasters are the ones that aren't needed. They shouldn't have taken me with them, they would of done it faster. We are not, in any way, needed. They probably should have had a fourth scrapper, or maybe a debuffer for decreased kill time.

Know why they took me? They needed someone to shoot the explosives. Sigh. They had done it many times over already... successfully.

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Sleeps are currently broken by heals, but to your group a Sleep was as good as a Hold because neither Scrappers nor Blasters are known for their abilities to heal others. An Empathy Controller/Defender can break Holds, and a Storm Summoning Controller/Defender can immunize you from Sleeps and Disorients.


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There were no sleeps, only disorients (and the occasional hold). I could *not* have been healed. I was insta-killed. I could *not* have been rescued by an empathy because they also would be one hit (no debuff). I could *not* have been saved with only two scrappers because the number of bosses outnumbered the scrappers already by a huge number. They never came close to dying, empathy was useless to them, and me. Tried it already with controllers and defenders, it didn't go nearly as well.

---

You seem quite reasonable, but you are still ignoring the underlying theme here.

We die. Lots. We died before, tending towards a fair bit (always glossed over because of SG). Min/max characters using TM and FA did just awesome. Now, even they are having problems. Grinding, sure... but outside of that?

Blasters are now support and they aren't fun support, they die all the time and can't survive any status effects.

This is *all* percisely the opposite of what they are before. I don't want to tank, I want not to wait 90-120 seconds why a lone boss in my single mission slowly freezes me to death. I want to not die from some boss that I didn't see come up and whack me, or when I can't get away and kite in time (indoor caves, egad). I want to not have FA miss 2/4 mobs and die before I can even run away. I want balance. I was a strong anti-smoke advocate because it removes teaming... but to go off the scale and *force* teaming is something else.

To be blunt, it sucks... a lot. To not have a choice in power pools because deviating means you get to eat dirt twice as often... that sucks. The datamining is skewed. My suggestion is to change the powerpool toggle powers to 'semi-intrinsic' (ie: they still consume end, can be turned on and off, but aren't hit by status effects) for at least Tough, Acrobatics and Stealth. That alone would make it feasible...

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I've called for a Blaster nerf somewhere? My Defender plays just fine and I'm quite comfortable with its desirability in groups, but thank you for the failed attempt at psychoanalysis.


[/ QUOTE ]

You heard me and I think you got the point. If not, oh well.

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Why should I have AT envy when I play members of every AT?

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I don't know. You are the psychoanalysis expert. You tell me. Why else are you posting and pissing everyone off?

-AZ

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[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Making mobs tougher and making our AOE weaker

[/ QUOTE ]

Never said exactly this. My hope is that making mobs tougher ALONE would bring AOE damage into line. But, I'm still researching different methods to solving this problem.

[/ QUOTE ]

Two worlds, DAMAGE CAP. An AoE ability should not do the same damage it does to 20 mobs that it does to 200 of them. At some point you have to call it enough. Do yer datamining and put a damage cap so after certian amounts of mobs, your damage will start to scale down. Until and unless you do this, AoE abilities will always be outright better than single target.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think rather than nerfing AoE you should look more into nerfing herding. If mobs were not able to be herded into group of 200 then that crap wouldn't happen. Don't nerf the ability to do a small mob on the ability of some min maxing powerlevelers clever way to make his xp gain exponentially more efficient. This is the very root of nerfs and why they tick casual players off so damn much. The powerleveler will just find the next trick in the book and the casual player is left sucking wind.

[/ QUOTE ]

There's no problem with herding. It's not an exploit. It's not done by any "powerleveler". Herding requires a group of at least two, one of which CANNOT be a blaster, and adding members to any herding group scales much better than adding members to a traditional group in terms of both xp gain AND skill utilization. Since the thread is about blasters, I'd also like to point out that blasters cannot herd on their own, so it's hardly the blasters' "fault" that people are herding. Herding exists because 1) it's fun 2) it's lucrative 3) it's a group activity, and 4) it finally gives tanks a purpose. Don't be so quick to judge herding if you've never been part of a herding group.

Where to start...

1. I believe that defenders get a larger percentage than others for Manuevers along the lines of 12.5%, not 7.8%. That would be substantial difference. Meaning, that the Defender was supposed to take that power pool. Taking a 1/2-a$$ed power pool to buff up your already low defense does nothing. I'm trying to figure out if 12.5% of 100 is better than say, 6.5% of 50.......the whole idea is, the game has severely limited what the blaster can do to build his defense. Your AR/Ice build hits Stealth early on, but Manuevers/Tactics don't get picked up before 35th/38th level? How are you ever going to get that far?

2. Played with a same-level Fire/Fire blaster last night on Positron's TF. Six times, he was one-shotted and sent to the hospital. The last two times, we had him refrain from firing until our controller had everyone held, the scrapper had the mobs blocked in a doorway, and everyone was fully bubbled. As soon as the Fire let loose his Rain, he was dead and the mobs overran the scrapper....with the weak defense of the blaster, I truely do see the AT disappearing...

3. Defenders, Tanks and Scrappers all take defensive power pool selections to suppliment their already substantial defenses. No one is being fooled into thinking that if a blaster "incorporates" some of the power pool selections, that he will suddenly become a viable class. As a comparison, we should tell the Tanks that from here on out, the minions will have double the accuracy against their class as before, then go and tell the Tanks that they now have to suppliment their builds with increasing offensive powers. They probably wouldn't feel too bad about that (other than the gross unfairness of that), because their secondary is melee. AGAIN, I bring up the fact that the blaster's secondary is not control (with possible exception of the Devices line), but more damage.........one cannot escape the idea that the Devs wished for the AT to be a one-shot, one-kill build, other wise they would have designed the AT in a more logical fashion.

....well, I'm not going to go any further, its really pointless.

Just eliminate the class. To me, they seem worthless already. They are a one-shot wonder. All of their attractiveness lays in their ability to deal mass damage, and that has already disappeared from what I can tell. I don't know what blasters you've been teaming with, but I don't see them doing much of anything. I've taken a Fire/Dev and an AR/Dev to their mid-20s, and they were in constant threat of being killed/KO'd. But, everyday, I still see the "Kill Frankenstein's monster!" in the forums and constant calls for nerfs. I've visited a few Super-Group webpages, and when I take a look at their rolecall, I see more Tanks at 50th level, than anything else.

If you wish to respond, I'd like to hear how a blaster is a viable class with the changes proposed. Having little or no defense to withstand any return fire, absolutely no defense in the secondary pools, limited hold/knockback powers in the secondary, and the lowest HP. Anytime you mix lowest HP + lowest Def, you get dead character unless they can avoid aggro or deal massive damage (eliminate the enemys' potential to harm them). I just don't see how its possible to carry forward with that idea.

Try giving the villians double the accuracy, and then we'll see how many people cry. No one wants to play a game that can't be "won". If my blaster has no solo or team viability, I won't ever play one, I don't have time to be that frustrated. Its no difference than if my defender couldn't properly defend or if my controller couldn't properly control......if the damage dealt by the blaster has half the effect (not enough damage to kill), they will not "work", it will be a broken AT.

All the builds in the world won't give the blaster the tools they need early in the game to even make it to the higher levels to pick up power pool selections.