Blaster Balance

I think the OP is way off base. Blasters are doing plenty of damage, and their defenses and mitigation are not too shabby.

Aside from all the other points made by other posters (the blaster AoEs can hit more targets, the cones are generally wider and longer ranged, etc.), having ranged attacks is an inherent advantage whose importance is underestimated. Spines is a very poor blaster set and was nerfed several issues ago to underscore that fact.

A blaster with Force of Nature and fast-recharge Build Up and Aim can easily outdamage a scrapper while having roughly comparable damage resistance. Many blaster sets have secondary mitigation effects or control-like powers that make up for the lack of defense/damage resistance before the epics.

Some sets (Electrical Blast, Fire) are light on mitigation, but I've personally found it easier to level my blasters than my scrappers. And that was before the change to Defiance.

With defiance blasters can always deliver ranged damage, even when held. That ability is often more important than having the scrapper's status protection. Most scrappers can do nothing when they're mired in Quicksand, immobilizes or similar effects.

If you're having a hard time making it as a blaster, your playing style is likely the cause. They're not scrappers and you can't normally play them like scrappers. Even blappers can't play like scrappers -- you have to lead with mitigating attacks, pay more attention to what the mobs are all doing. Scrappers have to use active offense for protection rather than static defenses.

Obitus: I agree with most of your content but have somehow come to different conclusions.

My Blasters (admittedly most of my Blasters are fire/*) are much more delicate than my Scrappers, and seem to do much more damage.
It may be observer bias. Here are some other possible explanations:

It may be "area covered"- it's a lot easier to hit eight guys with Blaster firebreath than with,for instance, Scrapper fire breath.

It may come down to the "degree of overkill": on a Fire/en/elec, I often have to tab a couple times to find a target for my third AOE. I go to knife range in a hurry and generally by the time I get to my melee attacks it doesn't take many of them to drop the survivors. I certainly feel like I'm getting through a lot more enemies a lot faster on a Blaster. Blaze/havoc punch/charged brawl is a lot of pain in a hurry. [I realize I'm mixing blasters; I have fire/ice, fire/elec and fire/energy, as well as sonic/mental, en/fire and a couple of lowbies. ]

It may come down to liberal use of nukes; my personal record being around 20 Crey in 12 seconds (bu/aim/fireball/fire breath/ "oops, other spawn aggroed"/jump/Inferno) followed closely by 28 Praetorian Banished Pantheon in 32 seconds (using careful herding in order to determine whether Blizzard was disproportionately "overkilly". Sadly, the overkill doesn't turn out to be easily useful due to the aggro cap.)

It may come down to "time between fights"- Spine Burst doesn't help between fights, while that downtime doesn't hurt the "waiting for recharge" time on Fireball and Firebreath.


Basically my feeling is that the balance for Blasters is still "Do they dare use their full potential on a team?" And if they do, and they survive, they do a LOT of damage in a HUGE hurry. I got on a team where I had Speed Boost and Adrenaline Boost most of the time, once... I figured I'd just keep speeding up until I died, and I didn't die. I was throwing a Nova about every 75 seconds. Bless that Empath, and bless that Kin.

I hate nuke end crash. To compensate, I either play AR/Arc/Ice (all which dont have end crash), or I don't take the nuke. I would rather be a steady fast paced damage machine that keeps scrappers in the party to play cleanup, over taking the nuke and dealing with all that down time. Oddly I have never thought to complain about it.

I, honestly, don't think blasters need any more changes. Tweaks maybe, but changes? Not really. I've never used a snipe for any blaster I've played and they're meant to be straight up damage ATs. They're the best at what they do (to quote Wolverine) and my blaster (without IOs) was outperforming any scrapper on a team.

And, because of slows, she doesn't usually take many hits. If you want to have damage resistance and defense AND high damage output, you're looking at the wrong AT. Blasters mitigate damage through mezzes and status effects, not through damage resistance and defense.

Being ice/ice/force, my blaster can hold a boss indefinately and keeps a couple LTs held while she mops up the minions, finishes off the LT then works the boss over. It doesn't take much for a blaster to clear mobs if you know how.

I love blasters and when I play any scrapper, I don't feel the same damage potential as a blaster. Don't get me wrong, they still hit hard and they have cool sets, but if I had a choice between an AoE scrapper and an AoE blaster, I'd go with the blaster.

I just thought I'd make a tangential, anecdotal observation based on reading the AT forums:

- All three of the Holy Trinity ATs (Blasters, Defenders, Tankers) consider themselves to be underperforming.
- Each one thinks the other two are better off.
- Each one thinks the other two get more dev love.
- None of them ever mention that a trinity team is easy mode for 100% of the game's content.
From level 1 to 50.
From TOs to purples.
For newbies and veterans alike.
Because when they are actually able to leverage their specialization, they are fricking ubar.

I16 has the biggest buff to Blasters, Defenders, and Tankers that the game has ever seen, and it's called Super SK. The only possible bigger buff would be a server merge and an auto-LFT flag that automatically teams your trinity AT character with the next two complementary AT characters to become available.

(And by the way, every trinity AT can also solo, albeit at reduced efficiency and/or greater risk. Which is more than you can say for some other games.)

Tangent over. Carry on!

BlackSly said

Actually, I just meant that underperforming ATs got buffed. Tanks were hardly underperforming up through I4, and Controllers soloing were considered underperforming until level 32, and they got buffed pre-pets and nerfed post-pets. Khelds received several buffs from their original designs.

And the point was simply that Blasters weren't the only ATs to get buffed, although they are the ones that have so far received the biggest buffs.

Lastly, I don't consider the GDN to be a nerf to any particular AT, though it was a nerf to every AT. It just changed the game in terms of how much defense was available to everyone, rather than being a rebalance to specific ATs.

I don't think you can say that the GDN was a universal nerf and leave it at that.

Consider the behaviour of Invuln and SR scrappers, for instance. In issue 4 Invuln had "75% S/L res, 66% E/N/F/C res, AND capped Def except against the last couple guys, and 60% more HP with an occasional huge heal" and SR had "Capped defense, maybe, if they weren't too much tougher than you." So Invuln was about 3 times as tough on resistance, 1.6 times as tough on HP... 4.8 times as tough, period.

Invuln lost a lot more than SR; I don't know if they had equal performance in issue 6, but it was a lot closer.

Likewise, Invuln scrappers got a lot closer to Blasters in defensive strength. Blasters lost... the ability to use AOE's on spawns far too large to survive. That was their main loss.

24% Defense- so half the even con minions missed you, and an even con AV (except the ones with Accuracy, like Chimaera or Battle Maiden or whatever) missed you 40% of the time instead of 15%. Yeah, that's going to make a difference on Headsplitter.

... And something like 18% smash/lethal resistance.

I like my blasters as is really. As far as Im concerned they are one of this games best classes. Im not sure why some one would compair the damage of a scrapper (a melee class who is always in the thick of it) to a Ranged class (Stand way back and shoot!). They dont have the survivability of a Scrapper/Tank because simply they are NOT either of those classes, even so a Blaster has some nice survivability considering. I dont think this game was intended for every class to solo every aspect of this game, if you want that dont play the games 'Glass cannon"

Note: this is also coming from a guy who's mains are a blaster and a brute if that lends itself to anything.

... is this the time to mention that,on any of my 3 favorite blasters, probably 40% of my single-target damage is done at point blank range?

Right then, moving along.

I don't think blasters are quite as bad off as the OP thinks, so my suggested buffs are a bit more modest, focusing not so much on the blaster AT itself, but on individual weak powers, which are often shared with other ATs and equally weak for those other ATs. Not that I don't like the OP's ideas, just that I'd still be happy with baby step buffs.

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Originally Posted by Seraphael Sniper powers

My theory on to-hit checks and interruptibility is this: you only need one or the other to provide uncertainty/randomness. Having both interruptibility and a to-hit check is overdoing it. Conclusion: Sniper blasts should be autohit--provided they're not interrupted, of course. This substantially increases the number of situations where a sniper power would be desirable. Just remember to tweak the sniper IO sets to no longer have accuracy anymore. (This logic applies to all interruptible powers on all ATs.)

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Nukes

Since we're on the topic of unnecessary randomness, did you know that nuke damage is highly random? There's a 75% chance of an extra "crit" hit, and a 50% chance of another extra hit. Instead, I'd rather see a little bit of the old Desperation mechanic. A blaster below 50% health will get all the ticks against all the targets, etc. (Defenders and corruptors too.)

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Flame Mastery

Forge!

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Force Mastery

Siphon Power!

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Voltanic Sentinel

Summoning limits are so typical of MMORPGs, not so much in theme with comic books. Comic books are bigger, faster, more. This game should reflect that, and summoning limits don't cut it. And for a non-targetable pet that can't tank for you, there's no real game balance need for summoning limits. So if a blaster specializes in Voltaic Sentinel to have four out at once, more power to him. Pun not intended. (Defenders and corruptor VS too, along with other non-targetable pets, like Spectral Terror.)

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Frozen Aura

The blaster and tanker versions both stunk. Castle's excuse for leaving the blaster version with no damage would have made sense if the blaster version got improved mez instead. It didn't, thus it seems like Castle just wanted to buff Ice Melee, not really Frozen Aura itself.

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Scare

The power's so bad, there's almost no way not to improve it. If it must be a 20 second recharge single target mez--how does such a power even exist in a fast paced one-versus-many game like this?--it should at least be brought into parity with Screech. Nice debuff attached, longer (not shorter) duration since fear is worse (not better) than stun, and maybe a little bit of damage.

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Additions:

* Mental Blast's debuff duration needs to be boosted to match its lengthened recharge time. Or, along with Psionic Dart, returned to its faster-firing original version, of course.
* Will Domination. Nuff said.
* Electric Blast's low-probability super-short-duration recovery debuffs are pointless. Tesla Cage, Short Circuit, and Thunderous Blast excepted, of course. The rest should be improved to slightly longer duration debuffs in line with Ice Blast and Sonic Attack, even if it means the debuffs need to be reduced from 100%. Endmod enhancements can bring them up again, whereas currently enhancing a debuff that's already 100% base isn't much use. (Defenders and corruptors and elec melee'ers too.)
* Web Grenade's slows need to stack, otherwise enemies get a huge burst of recharge and movement speed every time you reuse it. (Same for all weirdly non-stacking slows, like Infrigidate.)
* Combustion, Lightning Field, Consume, and Hot Feet have large radiuses for PBAoEs, at least as large as Fire Ball. Their target caps should be 16 accordingly; there's no reason they should hit fewer targets just because you have to be a little closer.
* Blaster melee and PBAoE attacks and toggles should reduce their threat level. Getting into melee with that "glass cannon" that's been plinking you from a distance should become a lot less desirable to the AI if the "glass cannon" suddenly busts out a Total Focus. Getting in the scrapper's face instead doesn't sound like such a bad idea now does it? (Same for all "squishy" AT melee attacks.)

i think the whining comes from not that we actually do more damage, but by how much we do more damage:

take a brute compared to a tank for example of what Im talking about.

Say we assign % values for their attributes:

Brute= 100% damage, 70% survival
tanker= 70% damage, 100% survival


In this regard, it is balanced in that while the tanker survives better, the brute clearly outshines it in damage, while being weaker survival wise.


now take a blaster and a scrapper

Blaster= 110% damage, 40% survival
Scrapper= 90% damage, 75% survival


Again, the blaster does outdo the scrapper in damage, but its the fact that the scrapper approaches the blaster level, while blowing the blaster out of the water in survival that warrants the whining.