Psychic

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EDIT: I also firmly believe that if Psychic Scream were in the Psi Blast as opposed to Mental Manipulation, we wouldn't be having these discussions as often.

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We still would. Matter of fact if anything I think the set would be even worse.

1st what do you take out to put in scream ?

Psi dart and mental blast are off the table they are all part of that standardized blaster tier 1/2. While I would love to have an aoe that i could use while mezzed I don't see that coming from Castle. Psychic focus is out. Taking it out would gut the set. Psychic wail likewise. We are left with psi nado, scramble thoughts, will dom, and psi lance.

You can't take out will dom. If you do you wind up needing an incredible amount of recharge to get a seemless attack chain for st.

That leaves just psionic lance and scramble thoughts. Of the two its pretty much a toss up. For psi when soloing snipe pulling is useful and you can follow up with the st attack chain as they run into range. Its slow but survivable. Lets pick the snipe for the sake of argument in this case.

we now have two ranged targeted aoes in the set lets look at them.

Psionic tornado
Dam/cast/rech
55.7/2.37/20 <---- These are just horrible.

Frost breath
87.6/2.67/16

Fire ball
78.8/1/16


Psi scream
65.1/2.67/12 <-- much better than tornado but still much worse than the other first level aoes

Ice Storm
116.8/2.03/60 <== off the wall recharge here but it hits twice as hard as scream

Fire Breath
109/2.67/16 <-- really much better here.


Psi scream just adds another below par AOE attack to the set. It does have the plus in adding another -rech power to the set but that really doesn't help much. -Rech just doesn't really seem to help blasters. Either the fights are fast and it doesn't factor much or you are fighting foes that have a resistance to debuffs. Its even worse when you are trying to deal with an alpha strike. They just throw all the ranged attacks they have at you and then charge.

Now lets look at some spawns
AIM+BU+Psi Nado+Psi Scream = 201+ 235 points of damage and half of aim+bu gone.

You are going to eat the return fire of all the minions in the spawn no getting around it. If they are hit by both they are gone. The lts are at half hitpoints, and the bosses are wondering if they need to put up mosquito netting.

The set definitely needs some looking at. The -rech should happen in all the powers. Will Dom needs its recharge time reduced and or it damage boosted. Scramble needs its cast time taken down to 1 sec

And last but not least by a longshot psionic tornado its recharge time dropped and or its damage upped by at least 50%. Just bring the thing in line with other blaster AOEs.

Does the quantifier 'as often' mean nothing to people?

The biggest complaint right now is that, for the mediocre (in comparison) single target damage that Psi does, it gives up way too much for it (in PVE). It doesn't have near the (reliable) control that Ice gets for it's single-target focus (and Ice also still gets perfectly viable AoE on top of that - 203 vs. 187 for Fire, though over a longer period, not factoring in Rain of Fire [seems silly you didn't, either, considering you did factor in Ice Storm]), nowhere near as 'balanced' as Sonic is (122 AoE damage, 3 100% reliable controls) in regards to AoE/control, and sure as heck doesn't even begin to compete with Fire for top damage.

In an examination, Psychic Blast is tied with Energy Blast (the range boost and the fact it fires it's chain off faster puts the two sets at an even tie. For burst damage, though, Energy is significantly behind. Sustained, they're about dead even) for Single Target damage at range, while not having near the control (while not reliable, every single attack in Energy Blast has a chance for KB, whereas not all of Psi's attacks even have a secondary effect, or even a significant one. TK Blast and Scramble Thoughts are the only reliable effects, with Will Domination and Psionic Tornado having theirs as a chance-of only), nor the raw AoE output (Energy's AoE chain does 116 damage).

If they had instead put Psychic Scream into the set in place of Scramble Thoughts or Psionic Lance, that would have put Psi's total AoE chain up to around 120 and at least make it compete favorably in that area with just under half of the blast sets available (Electric Blast has an AoE burst of 119; Archery, Fire, Ice, and Assault Rifle are far better built for AoE then anything else. To bring numbers back: Sonic, Energy, and Electrical have AoE outputs in the 116 to 120 range).

As it stands, however, with the way that Psychic Blast is set up, it's dead last for AoE output, only barely manages to compete for a #3 spot for Single Target damage, and has jack-all for reliable control. If Psychic Scream were in the set, it would at least be on-par in AoE damage with every other set in the game that's not heavily AoE focused, and then the only real valid complaint we'd have about it is that it's control is sub-par. But, unfortunately, we have two major issues instead.

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Does the quantifier 'as often' mean nothing to people?

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Yes, as I said though it would still be worse. You would either kill the st chain, lose the only hard control, or delete what is a nice opener for a heavily ranged set.

Yes with psi scream it would be about average in AOE, but still deficient with everything else. Its secondary effect -rech is slightly better than the same from ice but there is no slow to go with it. Its very hard to leverage that secondary because its not consistently applied by the powers.

Then there is the whole binary nature of psi being resisted.

If you put psi scream into the set you would have more people taking it and coming onto the boards saying its bad or more people saying oh its wonderful.

Oh P.S. I left out rain of fire because I was trying to compare like to like within the sets.

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No guides for psychic? I am running Psychic/Energy right now, and really liking it. This might be the blaster I take all the way.

Any tips?

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I have some advice....

Dont rely on the Psionic Sniper shot(Psionic Lance).
At one time a long time ago it actualy could do some good damge and didnt penalize you as much....it wasnt uber....but it later got balanced by some weird percption of balance and scale is really bad.

I am not saying to not take it....i am just saying don't count on it.(it doesnt do what a sniper shot is supposed to do...and its damage and range are sub-par at best now...there was atime you could out range a nemesis or crey sniper with it...but it got balanced...by someone who probably never tested or checked the sniper shots in this game)

Another Power to avoid is called scramble Thoughts...i tried to use this power....it supposed to leave things disoriented...and does minor damage...aka...it does 1 damage and its disorient suffers fromt he old being used by a defender or blaster problem as in its duration is non-existent......again i blame the person who supposedly tested the powers.

Psionic Tornado is an area of effect atatck it knocks things up...but if you put any of the knockback enehancers in it it knocks them back.....this is another example of failure to test things or know what enhancements are supposed to do....a long time ago knockback enahncers got fixed to help knock things up if the power knocked them up.....but this got fixed....by a pacth that broke the changes....again non-testign or looking at how something worked does this sort of thing.

Your best bet is to concentrate onthe basics....Psionic Dart, Mental blast, telekinetic blast, will domination, psychic focus and psychic wail...with maybe taking psionic lance for some added blaster damage buff after using it for your alpha shot.

As for some differences between the psionic blasts of defenders and blasters...you will probably quickly note that will domination on a balster is alot weaker,,,it does less damage and does not make a target sleep most of the time at least for a blaster.

A Blasters big atatcks are believe it or not Mental Blast and Telekinetic Blast...

By the way Telekinetic Blast doesnt do psionic damage only...its very effective against machines(i.e. the stuff with high resists to psionic damage)

I think the best advice i can give is to be prepared for your slow atatck speeds compared to anyone else...ona team you will probably hit last alot...and end up missing the kill shots alot....its no big deal....you will be on par with damage when you do hit.

I could give you more advice if you had a secondary like psychic as well....
Then i would tell you that the confusion world toggle power...doesnt really work that well...i am sure the developement team knows it doesnt work very well...and i am sure it is more or less some form of joke to the extent in how it works.

Kind of like the sleep gas mine that a poison using master mind can get...another joke power.

Hoefuly this was a bit helpful....

I have alot of experience with psionic blast and and the changes its had....and it usage on all archtypes....

I myself enjoy the powers....though i don't enjoy them as much as i did....becasue the powers keep getting balanced...which makes them do less damage and become far less effective....which can be a big turn off when you know someone is doing their low damage attacks and your supposedly high damage attacks can't even compete when they are fully enhanced.

I am hoping someone in the powers group will actualy wake up and notice.

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Does the quantifier 'as often' mean nothing to people?

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Yes, as I said though it would still be worse. You would either kill the st chain, lose the only hard control, or delete what is a nice opener for a heavily ranged set.

Yes with psi scream it would be about average in AOE, but still deficient with everything else. Its secondary effect -rech is slightly better than the same from ice but there is no slow to go with it. Its very hard to leverage that secondary because its not consistently applied by the powers.

Then there is the whole binary nature of psi being resisted.

If you put psi scream into the set you would have more people taking it and coming onto the boards saying its bad or more people saying oh its wonderful.

Oh P.S. I left out rain of fire because I was trying to compare like to like within the sets.

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I think it'd really depend what you dropped for it - though it would leave the problem of how to shuffle the set and what to do with Mental Manipulation at this point that would really make more people upset then just adjusting Psychic Blast will in the end.

And I brought up Rain of Fire because it's the exact same thing as Ice Storm, with the same DoT duration, and recharge. Bringing up one and not bringing up the other kind of skews the results. :/

I think it's unlikely that they're going to change Psy too much at this point, but there really needs to be something done. The secondary effect not being applied to everything is also an issue I hadn't thought about, but it's a good point.

As for the Single-Target chain... I've already run the numbers on it. Dropping Will Domination out would put it just under Archery and Energy Blast (by 9-10 points) and still superior to Sonic, AR, and Elec, while dropping out Psionic Dart would create some gaps in it's attack chain until recharge could be added in (adjusting the recharge on it's ST chain at that point would probably put it back to the first chain's damage... which may not be that bad, but you'd have even more people complaining about Will Domination being gutted, and additional complaints about TK Blast and Mental Blast getting a similar treatment despite the fact it'd still be a competitive ST chain) with the added point that it still cycles it's initial burst a full second faster then any set short of Ice and Fire (which starts to matter the more recharge you throw into the equation).

I personally think the inclusion of Psionic Dart and moving Psychic Scream out was a big mistake, though the moving of Subdual was really to be expected (as it's the only Psi-typed immobilize in the game). Though I probably wouldn't object to them moving Psionic Lance out (which would make it more similar to Ice and Sonic, two sets that also don't feature snipes) without losing any real, solid control (despite the fact it doesn't have anything reliable outside of TK Blast and Scramble Thoughts - I'd like to see that changed as well).

But that's all just my thoughts on how I'd shuffle things, and clearly Castle had a different opinion when he originally made the set... Bit late to really change it now, though, with the 'cottage rule' in effect.

I went Psi/MM, and I'm glad I did, but I can say that despite the cons that min/maxers mention (high recharge/cast times of some of the attacks, the borked versions of Will Domination and Psi 'nado, low AoE damage, and mish-mosh/non-stackable controls, its still a fun set, IMO. Admittedly, I think it could use a bit of a buff... a bump up in damage for Will Dom would be my choice, and maybe give a slight damage buff or Endurance discount to Psi'nado considering that, other than the nuke, its the only AoE in the set and its Endurance cost for what it does is kind of ridiculous.

Psi blast is definitely not lacking in the uniqueness of concept department. At least not until dominators can get redeemed, anyway.

But, as with most concept builds, you end up playing the "okay how can I make this concept not suck" game. IIRC my level 2* psi/mm manages by having two primaries (one of which is Aim) and many many secondaries.

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No guides for psychic? I am running Psychic/Energy right now, and really liking it. This might be the blaster I take all the way.

Any tips?

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Avoid Teams...

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While TK blast is very nice at L4 its not so nice once you hit L18 and compare it to bitter ice blast and blaze - both of which do more damage and cast just as fast.

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I am going to paraphrase Castle, you should not compare any Tier 3s to Bitter Ice Blast and Blaze because they are not what Tier 3 blasts should be. Blaze and Bitter Ice Blast are going to get nerfed hard in terms of damage when Castle gets around to.

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I am going to paraphrase Castle, you should not compare any Tier 3s to Bitter Ice Blast and Blaze because they are not what Tier 3 blasts should be. Blaze and Bitter Ice Blast are going to get nerfed hard in terms of damage when Castle gets around to.

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If you really think this, can you make the list of what gonna be nerfed hard when Castle gets around it ? Following this reasoning, I see at least a few dozen of things.

And when all those things that make sets uniques and not clones to each other gonna be drown in the swamp of normalization (ala i13 pvp), there wont be alot of "super" left in this game

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I am going to paraphrase Castle, you should not compare any Tier 3s to Bitter Ice Blast and Blaze because they are not what Tier 3 blasts should be. Blaze and Bitter Ice Blast are going to get nerfed hard in terms of damage when Castle gets around to.

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If you really think this, can you make the list of what gonna be nerfed hard when Castle gets around it ? Following this reasoning, I see at least a few dozen of things.

And when all those things that make sets uniques and not clones to each other gonna be drown in the swamp of normalization (ala i13 pvp), there wont be alot of "super" left in this game

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I think the point of it is that they're powers that operate significantly outside of the acceptable bounds of what is considered "normal". They're significant outliers from a basic balance perspective because they were balanced without consideration for their animation times. If you want an example of a similar power getting kicked back in line, just look at Energy Transfer. Its damage wasn't touched, but its DPA was brought back in line (though still incredibly high) by increasing the animation time. You can probably expect something similar seeing as the damage the two powers mentioned deal isn't that far out of normalcy. It's the time in which that damage is dealt in.

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I am going to paraphrase Castle, you should not compare any Tier 3s to Bitter Ice Blast and Blaze because they are not what Tier 3 blasts should be. Blaze and Bitter Ice Blast are going to get nerfed hard in terms of damage when Castle gets around to.

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If you really think this, can you make the list of what gonna be nerfed hard when Castle gets around it ? Following this reasoning, I see at least a few dozen of things.

And when all those things that make sets uniques and not clones to each other gonna be drown in the swamp of normalization (ala i13 pvp), there wont be alot of "super" left in this game

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Won't be much game left in the game.

. . . .Huh?

I'm confused. I'm rather enjoying my mind blaster, and at level 38 I think I've already had a chance to sample most of the powers. Then again, my other Blaster is arch/Dev, and I've never played Fire or Ice, so I can't compare to either of those sets.

Mental Manipulation coupled with Psi blast leaves you with a good spawn blast of
Psychic Scream +> Psychic Tornado +> Close to Melee +> Optional Drain Psyche +> Psychic Shockwave.
It's gotten me along so far.

I guess I should disclaimer that people learned I was fighting Nemesis with my psy blaster, and wrote me off as a loony for it. My game experience may not reflect your own.

I also guess that I can give some vanilla advice for Psychic Blast:

Take Psi Dart and Mental Blast, a Blaster's defiance seems to work best with both early attacks

TK Blast is wonderful, pick it up. Aim is nice.

Will Domination is Meh, especially if you team a lot. The sleep becomes less useful.

Snipe is to your personal preference. I took mine.

Psinado is the weak member of the AoE combo blast I mentioned before, and without the other Mental Manipulation sets to back it up it might not be worth your time, although the knockdown it does can buy you a few seconds.

haven't experimented heavily with Scramble Thoughts.

Nuke is a nuke. Took mine.

Hidden bonus: Try and pick up the Rune of Purification day job power that comes with Archeologist. It helps take out enemies tagged as Robots, with their high psychic resistance.

. . . Eurgh, this post is hideous. Rambling stream of consciousness for the the lose.

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While TK blast is very nice at L4 its not so nice once you hit L18 and compare it to bitter ice blast and blaze - both of which do more damage and cast just as fast.

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I am going to paraphrase Castle, you should not compare any Tier 3s to Bitter Ice Blast and Blaze because they are not what Tier 3 blasts should be. Blaze and Bitter Ice Blast are going to get nerfed hard in terms of damage when Castle gets around to.

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I was just pointing out why, currently, psi-blast is considered inferier in single target damage to ice and fire. Yes, some day blaze and BiB may get the nerf bat - until then though TK blast lags behind in both damage and DPA and is a more resisted damage type.

You will notice I DID follow up with advice on how to maximze the potential of the character. I firmly believe folks should be able to enjoy whatever character combo's they want to play - but I also feel I should point out shortcomings in the set so they know what they are getting into.

Fun factoid: Telekinetic Blast only does 20 less damage (base) then Bitter Ice Blast. Which in turn does 19 less damage then Blazing Arrow, and 10 more damage then Power Burst and Shout (which does 10 more then Telekinetic Blast).

The biggest difference? Blaze, Bitter Ice Blast, and Telekinetic Blast all fire off in 1s of animation time, and Telekinetic Blast adds a KB component and an additional 40' of range.

Weird, no?

EDIT: And Blaze does 66 more damage then TK Blast (46 more then Bitter Ice Blast), for comparison's sake.

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I am going to paraphrase Castle, you should not compare any Tier 3s to Bitter Ice Blast and Blaze because they are not what Tier 3 blasts should be. Blaze and Bitter Ice Blast are going to get nerfed hard in terms of damage when Castle gets around to.

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If you really think this, can you make the list of what gonna be nerfed hard when Castle gets around it ? Following this reasoning, I see at least a few dozen of things.

And when all those things that make sets uniques and not clones to each other gonna be drown in the swamp of normalization (ala i13 pvp), there wont be alot of "super" left in this game

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I think the point of it is that they're powers that operate significantly outside of the acceptable bounds of what is considered "normal". They're significant outliers from a basic balance perspective because they were balanced without consideration for their animation times. If you want an example of a similar power getting kicked back in line, just look at Energy Transfer. Its damage wasn't touched, but its DPA was brought back in line (though still incredibly high) by increasing the animation time. You can probably expect something similar seeing as the damage the two powers mentioned deal isn't that far out of normalcy. It's the time in which that damage is dealt in.

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Blaze should not be affected, because of fire blasts zero mitigation. Having it super damage really fast IS its mitigation.

BiB however, considering the lines of how low its aoe is, might get a tiny increase in animation. Perhaps to 1.5 or 1.83, but nothing superly major. IF its 1.83s i'd honestly expect to see the impale animation used.

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Blaze should not be affected, because of fire blasts zero mitigation. Having it super damage really fast IS its mitigation.

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The point that I'm trying to make is that Blaze does more damage than any other non-snipe blast except for Blazing Arrow (which only wins because its ticks are guaranteed) but takes the exact amount of time to animate as a tier 1 blast. It's DPA is through the friggin' roof compared to all of the others out there.

Blazing Arrow: 86.73 DPA (171.73 dam, 1.98 sec animation)
Power Burst: 59.1 DPA (132.63 dam, 2.244 sec animation)
Blaze: 143.7 DPA (170.49 dam, 1.188 sec animation)
Bitter Ice Blast: 108.0 DPA (142.64 dam, 1.32 sec animation)
Telekinetic Blast: 103.2 DPA (122.62 dam, 1.188 sec animation)
Shout: 45.67 DPA (132.64 dam, 2.904 sec animation)

Honestly, Blaze is just too friggin' good. Even discounting the 37.86 additional damage from the bonus DoT (re: secondary effect), Blaze would still be the top attack on that list with 111.6 DPA. It's not as if Blaze is only slightly better. It's that it's substantially better in such a way that no other tier 3 blast can even compete, even ignoring secondary effects.

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BiB however, considering the lines of how low its aoe is, might get a tiny increase in animation. Perhaps to 1.5 or 1.83, but nothing superly major. IF its 1.83s i'd honestly expect to see the impale animation used.

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Honestly, BIB is going to get a much smaller change than Blaze will if/when Castle gets to it, if only because it's on a 20 seconds recharge rather than a 10 second recharge. I still predict that it will get its animation changed to something slower, but not so much as I expect Blaze to get slowed down to.

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Blaze should not be affected, because of fire blasts zero mitigation. Having it super damage really fast IS its mitigation.

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The point that I'm trying to make is that Blaze does more damage than any other non-snipe blast except for Blazing Arrow (which only wins because its ticks are guaranteed) but takes the exact amount of time to animate as a tier 1 blast. It's DPA is through the friggin' roof compared to all of the others out there.

Blazing Arrow: 86.73 DPA (171.73 dam, 1.98 sec animation)
Power Burst: 59.1 DPA (132.63 dam, 2.244 sec animation)
Blaze: 143.7 DPA (170.49 dam, 1.188 sec animation)
Bitter Ice Blast: 108.0 DPA (142.64 dam, 1.32 sec animation)
Telekinetic Blast: 103.2 DPA (122.62 dam, 1.188 sec animation)
Shout: 45.67 DPA (132.64 dam, 2.904 sec animation)

Honestly, Blaze is just too friggin' good. Even discounting the 37.86 additional damage from the bonus DoT (re: secondary effect), Blaze would still be the top attack on that list with 111.6 DPA. It's not as if Blaze is only slightly better. It's that it's substantially better in such a way that no other tier 3 blast can even compete, even ignoring secondary effects.

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BiB however, considering the lines of how low its aoe is, might get a tiny increase in animation. Perhaps to 1.5 or 1.83, but nothing superly major. IF its 1.83s i'd honestly expect to see the impale animation used.

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Honestly, BIB is going to get a much smaller change than Blaze will if/when Castle gets to it, if only because it's on a 20 seconds recharge rather than a 10 second recharge. I still predict that it will get its animation changed to something slower, but not so much as I expect Blaze to get slowed down to.

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You look at that and see reasons to nerf. I look at it and I see a bunch of powers that need a bit of a buff.

Ticking off all the fire and ice blasters that play the game isn't a smart move. But given the recent track record of the developers on execution it could easily go either way.

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The point that I'm trying to make is that Blaze does more damage than any other non-snipe blast except for Blazing Arrow (which only wins because its ticks are guaranteed) but takes the exact amount of time to animate as a tier 1 blast. It's DPA is through the friggin' roof compared to all of the others out there.

Blazing Arrow: 86.73 DPA (171.73 dam, 1.98 sec animation)
Power Burst: 59.1 DPA (132.63 dam, 2.244 sec animation)
Blaze: 143.7 DPA (170.49 dam, 1.188 sec animation)
Bitter Ice Blast: 108.0 DPA (142.64 dam, 1.32 sec animation)
Telekinetic Blast: 103.2 DPA (122.62 dam, 1.188 sec animation)
Shout: 45.67 DPA (132.64 dam, 2.904 sec animation)

Honestly, Blaze is just too friggin' good. Even discounting the 37.86 additional damage from the bonus DoT (re: secondary effect), Blaze would still be the top attack on that list with 111.6 DPA. It's not as if Blaze is only slightly better. It's that it's substantially better in such a way that no other tier 3 blast can even compete, even ignoring secondary effects.


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Yes we all know this. This is because fire has ZERO mitigation, outside of killing fast. And its the way it will most likely stay, and should for good reason.

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Honestly, BIB is going to get a much smaller change than Blaze will if/when Castle gets to it, if only because it's on a 20 seconds recharge rather than a 10 second recharge. I still predict that it will get its animation changed to something slower, but not so much as I expect Blaze to get slowed down to.

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Um... 20 seconds? its recharge is 12 seconds dude. Youre thinking of BFR.

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Blaze should not be affected, because of fire blasts zero mitigation. Having it super damage really fast IS its mitigation.

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The point that I'm trying to make is that Blaze does more damage than any other non-snipe blast except for Blazing Arrow (which only wins because its ticks are guaranteed) but takes the exact amount of time to animate as a tier 1 blast. It's DPA is through the friggin' roof compared to all of the others out there.

Blazing Arrow: 86.73 DPA (171.73 dam, 1.98 sec animation)
Power Burst: 59.1 DPA (132.63 dam, 2.244 sec animation)
Blaze: 143.7 DPA (170.49 dam, 1.188 sec animation)
Bitter Ice Blast: 108.0 DPA (142.64 dam, 1.32 sec animation)
Telekinetic Blast: 103.2 DPA (122.62 dam, 1.188 sec animation)
Shout: 45.67 DPA (132.64 dam, 2.904 sec animation)

Honestly, Blaze is just too friggin' good. Even discounting the 37.86 additional damage from the bonus DoT (re: secondary effect), Blaze would still be the top attack on that list with 111.6 DPA. It's not as if Blaze is only slightly better. It's that it's substantially better in such a way that no other tier 3 blast can even compete, even ignoring secondary effects.

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BiB however, considering the lines of how low its aoe is, might get a tiny increase in animation. Perhaps to 1.5 or 1.83, but nothing superly major. IF its 1.83s i'd honestly expect to see the impale animation used.

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Honestly, BIB is going to get a much smaller change than Blaze will if/when Castle gets to it, if only because it's on a 20 seconds recharge rather than a 10 second recharge. I still predict that it will get its animation changed to something slower, but not so much as I expect Blaze to get slowed down to.

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You look at that and see reasons to nerf. I look at it and I see a bunch of powers that need a bit of a buff.

Ticking off all the fire and ice blasters that play the game isn't a smart move. But given the recent track record of the developers on execution it could easily go either way.

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As could I and many other players about their subscriptions at this point in the game. Its quite sad to see how much this game has died down since a couple years ago . Nerfing things like this is one big reason for it too :/. So while not saying i would leave the game specifically for this, but it would mean less people to team with, and bring the game closer to dying

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Blaze should not be affected, because of fire blasts zero mitigation. Having it super damage really fast IS its mitigation.

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The point that I'm trying to make is that Blaze does more damage than any other non-snipe blast except for Blazing Arrow (which only wins because its ticks are guaranteed) but takes the exact amount of time to animate as a tier 1 blast. It's DPA is through the friggin' roof compared to all of the others out there.

Blazing Arrow: 86.73 DPA (171.73 dam, 1.98 sec animation)
Power Burst: 59.1 DPA (132.63 dam, 2.244 sec animation)
Blaze: 143.7 DPA (170.49 dam, 1.188 sec animation)
Bitter Ice Blast: 108.0 DPA (142.64 dam, 1.32 sec animation)
Telekinetic Blast: 103.2 DPA (122.62 dam, 1.188 sec animation)
Shout: 45.67 DPA (132.64 dam, 2.904 sec animation)

Honestly, Blaze is just too friggin' good. Even discounting the 37.86 additional damage from the bonus DoT (re: secondary effect), Blaze would still be the top attack on that list with 111.6 DPA. It's not as if Blaze is only slightly better. It's that it's substantially better in such a way that no other tier 3 blast can even compete, even ignoring secondary effects.

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BiB however, considering the lines of how low its aoe is, might get a tiny increase in animation. Perhaps to 1.5 or 1.83, but nothing superly major. IF its 1.83s i'd honestly expect to see the impale animation used.

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Honestly, BIB is going to get a much smaller change than Blaze will if/when Castle gets to it, if only because it's on a 20 seconds recharge rather than a 10 second recharge. I still predict that it will get its animation changed to something slower, but not so much as I expect Blaze to get slowed down to.

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You look at that and see reasons to nerf. I look at it and I see a bunch of powers that need a bit of a buff.

Ticking off all the fire and ice blasters that play the game isn't a smart move. But given the recent track record of the developers on execution it could easily go either way.

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As could I and many other players about their subscriptions at this point in the game. Its quite sad to see how much this game has died down since a couple years ago . Nerfing things like this is one big reason for it too :/. So while not saying i would leave the game specifically for this, but it would mean less people to team with, and bring the game closer to dying

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Boy, talk about DOOOOM.

The devs can datamine to see past player assumptions. If something needs nerfs or buffs, it'll get some.

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Yes we all know this. This is because fire has ZERO mitigation, outside of killing fast. And its the way it will most likely stay, and should for good reason.

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The reasons I think it won't stay like that is because, if you actually check out how Castle balanced Fire Melee, he didn't give it any attacks that are outrageously better than their counterparts in other sets. What he did was make Fire a top contender at both single target and AoE damage, something that no other set really does because those sets always give up either one or the other for the mitigation capability. As it stands, Fire is absolutely better at ST damage (largely because of Blaze) and a top contender at AoE damage (only AR can really compete exclusively within set).

The "no mitigation, better damage" argument only extends so far, especially when it's a single mitigation power that's being given up and the secondary effect that is supposed to be the reason why the attacks have better DPA is taken out. Losing a power that most people skip from their primary anyway (and isn't even all that major because there are still a some attainable through secondary power sets) isn't an excuse for the set to rule the school at all forms of damage output.

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Um... 20 seconds? its recharge is 12 seconds dude. Youre thinking of BFR.

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Yeah, my bad. Misread the CoD table. >.< It's still legitimate to point out that BIB has a higher base recharge than the others to account for its higher DPA, especially considering that every other tier 3 blast (except Shout with it's recharge of 11 seconds, which is arguably the worst tier 3 blast out there) has a recharge of 10 seconds.

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Boy, talk about DOOOOM.

The devs can datamine to see past player assumptions. If something needs nerfs or buffs, it'll get some.

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Lol devs datamining.