My Eng/Eng Blaster should do more damage, and here's why:
By
Folonius,
Posted on: 2009-08-10 15:02 in Suggestions and Ideas
Power Burst needs some love, yeah. An animation reduction by a couple tenths of a second would be nice, as would a guaranteed stun.
TF, on the other hand, doesn't really need anything. It's alrady the most powerful ST attack available to blasters. Heck, Blaster TF is the second most powerful attack in the game (after Stalker Energy Transfer). It also has a reliable and useful mezz effect, and although the animation is long it still has good DPA.
The only change I could see for TF is a small reduction in animation time. Possibly by .5 seconds or so.
Quote:
Energy Primary for blasters needs a complete rehaul IMO. The secondary effect can be extremly annoying if used in the hands of a new player, and sometimes people just don't understand how to use KB effectivly. Bring Power Push up a few notches to an earlier tier, or add more damage, or just change the effect to KB + Stun. Remove KB from some of the powers, or make them KD instead or as suggested, just add more damage.|
Originally Posted by Vanden
Okay, so Power Burst seems like it should be a seriously scary single-target blast, right? Only it's not, Bitter Ice Blast, Blaze, and Blazing Arrow, the equivalent blasts in other sets, all do more damage and activate faster, which is totally unfair, and we all know how fairness is a central tenet of MMOs. Power Burst doesn't even get a cool or even reliable secondary effect like other powers like Cosmic Burst to make up for it. The solution!: MOAR DAMAGE. It should do at least as much damage as Blaze, and maybe even have 100% chance of knockback!
Now, secondary-wise: Bone Smasher and Energy Punch, for Blasters, are slower and stronger than the versions for Tankers. This is because, for Blasters, we want them to be more burst-damagey and less attack-chainy, DPS-ey than for Tankers because Blasters get more attacks than melee types, and because going into melee is a risky proposition for them unlike melee ATs where it's SOP. But Total Focus is left out! Whuuuhh???  Yes friends, Total Focus is exactly the same in Energy Manipulation as it is in Energy Melee. Why? Why didn't it get the longer-recharge, higher-endurance, more damage-treatment too? I don't know, and neither do you! Let's make it so! |
It's rather unbalanced from other sets, and I tend to avoid taking energy blast on blasters. On a defender, it's not that bad. A person tends to play more defender oriented and uses the KB as it was intended. Putting a control power on every power in a blaster set is just dumb.
My eng/eng blaster and all my future energy blasters concur.
With the ability to change color energy blast is probably going to be my favourite powerset once again. Poor baby, daddy loves you, it's alright... there, there. *pets the powerset, dusts it off*
Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
Quote:
Power Burst really is the ugly stepchild of the tier 3 blast world. It's got abysmal DPA, especially when you consider that the tier 3 blast is supposed to be substantially more powerful than the tier 1 and 2 blasts (re: at least 50% better DPA is pretty much standard). It's DPA is a pitiful 59.1. The tier 1 and 2 blasts have DPAs of 52.7 and 55.5, respectively. Virtually every other tier 3 blast (all of them if you include Shout's longer -res component) have DPAs that are at least 90 (the DPAs of the tier 1 and 2 blasts are all pretty much the same with a couple exceptions).|
Originally Posted by Vanden
Okay, so Power Burst seems like it should be a seriously scary single-target blast, right? Only it's not, Bitter Ice Blast, Blaze, and Blazing Arrow, the equivalent blasts in other sets, all do more damage and activate faster, which is totally unfair, and we all know how fairness is a central tenet of MMOs. Power Burst doesn't even get a cool or even reliable secondary effect like other powers like Cosmic Burst to make up for it. The solution!: MOAR DAMAGE. It should do at least as much damage as Blaze, and maybe even have 100% chance of knockback!
|
The best solution as I see it is to increase the damage to roughly 200 (~50% increase in base damge). It would give it a DPA that's actually competitive with the rest of the tier 3 blasts. The secondary effect doesn't really need to be addressed, as I see it, simply because its already got a more reliable and higher mag knockback effect than any of the other blasts: the secondary effect is already where it needs to be.
Quote:
|
Now, secondary-wise: Bone Smasher and Energy Punch, for Blasters, are slower and stronger than the versions for Tankers. This is because, for Blasters, we want them to be more burst-damagey and less attack-chainy, DPS-ey than for Tankers because Blasters get more attacks than melee types, and because going into melee is a risky proposition for them unlike melee ATs where it's SOP. But Total Focus is left out! Whuuuhh??? Yes friends, Total Focus is exactly the same in Energy Manipulation as it is in Energy Melee. Why? Why didn't it get the longer-recharge, higher-endurance, more damage-treatment too? I don't know, and neither do you! Let's make it so!
|
On a less on-topic note, did anyone else expect some horrible roleplay inspired "logic" blurb that insisted that because the character is channeling universal forces in coherent blasts that the character should be dealing more damage than the guy flinging fire?
Quote:
Total Focus is not as good as it appears to be on the surface. It has inferior DPA and DPS to both Bone Smasher and Energy Punch thanks to its long activation time. It used to be a worthy tier 9 when it had a mag 4 stun and could stun most bosses in one shot, but now many people don't even take it. I did, because I love the bugger, but even I admit that I rarely find myself using it because the effects aren't worth the 3.3 second activation time. It really could use a buff since losing the mag 4 stun, since it really wasn't that overpowered in the hands of Blasters as it was for Tankers etc.| I think there are 2 reasons that it didn't get the "increase the base damage" treatment (which also increases recharge and endurance thanks to the damage formula): it's already got a recharge on it that makes it incapable of being put into an attack string easily and it's already a really strong power (based on single source of damage rather than DPS). Increasing the damage/recharge/end of the other punches made them less integral to Blaster attack strings than they were before. The intent, as I recall, was to make the primary the foundation of Blaster attack strings rather than the melee attacks of certain secondaries. |
And lets not even get into the major disappointment it is in the Power Mastery pool for Defenders...
Issue 16 made me feel like this.
Warning: This poster likes to play Devil's Advocate.
Quote:
I realize this. I actually specifically mentioned that the power is rather poor for DPA and thereby DPS. This is less a point of it not having enough damage and more a point of the animation taking too long. Animation has a lot more to do with how useful an attack is than outright damage 99% of the time, especially from the current balance perspective wherein animation time is completely ignored.|
Originally Posted by Vanden
Total Focus is not as good as it appears to be on the surface. It has inferior DPA and DPS to both Bone Smasher and Energy Punch thanks to its long activation time.
|
Quote:
| It used to be a worthy tier 9 when it had a mag 4 stun and could stun most bosses in one shot, but now many people don't even take it. I did, because I love the bugger, but even I admit that I rarely find myself using it because the effects aren't worth the 3.3 second activation time. It really could use a buff since losing the mag 4 stun, since it really wasn't that overpowered in the hands of Blasters as it was for Tankers etc. |
If you really want to try to get it made into a better attack, you're better off asking for the animation time to be reduced to roughly 2 seconds. That'll keep all of the recharge and endurance costs the same while making the attack actually competitive against other melee powers.
Quote:
Nah, I think I'd rather have the 35 second recharge/33 end version. I got plenty of quick, functional attacks; a slow, incredibly devastating single-target attack would be sweet.
|
As it stands, to bring Total Focus up to the same level of DPA as Energy Punch, it would need to get its damage scalar increased to 6.125 (354.25 damage unenhanced). That would increase the endurance cost to roughly 33 end and the recharge to roughly 35 seconds. If you really want to try to get it made into a better attack, you're better off asking for the animation time to be reduced to roughly 2 seconds. That'll keep all of the recharge and endurance costs the same while making the attack actually competitive against other melee powers. |
Issue 16 made me feel like this.
Warning: This poster likes to play Devil's Advocate.
Okay, so Power Burst seems like it should be a seriously scary single-target blast, right? Only it's not, Bitter Ice Blast, Blaze, and Blazing Arrow, the equivalent blasts in other sets, all do more damage and activate faster, which is totally unfair, and we all know how fairness is a central tenet of MMOs. Power Burst doesn't even get a cool or even reliable secondary effect like other powers like Cosmic Burst to make up for it. The solution!: MOAR DAMAGE. It should do at least as much damage as Blaze, and maybe even have 100% chance of knockback!
Yes friends, Total Focus is exactly the same in Energy Manipulation as it is in Energy Melee. Why? Why didn't it get the longer-recharge, higher-endurance, more damage-treatment too? I don't know, and neither do you! Let's make it so!
Now, secondary-wise: Bone Smasher and Energy Punch, for Blasters, are slower and stronger than the versions for Tankers. This is because, for Blasters, we want them to be more burst-damagey and less attack-chainy, DPS-ey than for Tankers because Blasters get more attacks than melee types, and because going into melee is a risky proposition for them unlike melee ATs where it's SOP. But Total Focus is left out! Whuuuhh???
Issue 16 made me feel like this.
Warning: This poster likes to play Devil's Advocate.