Single Target Blasters valuable on teams?

I do not mean to troll here, but I am interested in gathering some opinions.

I used to solo more but now I mostly team. It seems that my AoE blasters, such as fire/, AR/ and Archery/ bring more damage to a team than my single-target blasters such as ice/ and sonic/.

Do you think single-target blasters pull their weight on large teams? Why or why not?

That depends on who you ask.

Some people, literally, think every Blaster is a fire Blaster (the team is providing mitigation so your 'job' is to just do damage), much in the same way every Defender is naturally an empath, and every Tank should be made of granite. Those roles are so stuck in their head that nothing else is worth playing nor adding to a team.

The truth is, everyone has AOE. I've done invincible ITF's with an Energy/Elec/Elec where I'm the only Blaster/Corrupter on the team and we're doing great. I don't need to be a fire Blaster to 'pull my weight', because I am but a sum of the team's AOE (that Blaster, with 3 AOEs, gets played just the same as I would a fire blaster on teams, just with more care taken in terms of positioning and timing). I may be the biggest chunk of AOE damage on a team like that, in most cases, but everyone else is contributing as well (unless you have people that want to play with incomplete toons with pigeonholed roles, but I rarely play with those kinds, anyhow).

That's a big reason why I try to make a point every time someone skips a power like Explosive Blast (or the equivalent).

"Well, I'm not an AOE blaster" is the common response.

But you are part of the AOE component of your team!

Most blasters have a cone + targeted AOE as part of their primary, and therefore the possibility of adding a rather substantial amount of AOE damage to a team. The ones that don't still tend to bring some AOE to the table and make up for it by providing other valuable tools (such as the holds in ice).

I may not have answered your question, but that's because (outside of intentionally built concept toons) I don't think there really is such a thing as an AOE or ST blaster. Some sets tend to have a little more of one or the other, but all sets provide some of both, and therefore those components are added to the team's overall damage output if the player decides to use them.

ST Blasters with a good Tanker = easy mode. Target the Tanker and burn down the bad guys quickly and safely. All other scenarios require restraint, planning and a good team. You are just as effective/useful, it just requires more of you.

Alright. Thanks all. I was feeling a little guilty about making a great sonic/em solo blaster and how he wouldn't be as effective on teams, but maybe he'll be just fine. Thanks.

I'm a little late to the conversation...

as mentioned, the spawn isn't over until ALL the enemies are down. Bosses too.

One thing that cannot be said enough times - a single-target-focused Blaster who's on the ball can put any Scrapper to shame in his sleep. Blasters have absurdly powerful melee attacks (for what they are, anyway) and very high sustained damage output, so if a Blaster isn't afraid to stick his neck out, he can do amazing things. I remember putting a couple of Scrappers to shame on a team by wiping out two bosses by myself by the time the two Scrappers were almost done with the third one. That's with heavy team support, of course. Solo, I'd have been a spot on the wall.

On the other hand, the efficiency of AoEs scales quite sharply with the number of enemies affected, and both endurance/time efficiency and raw damage output outstrip single-target attacks after about four or five enemies, off the top of my head. Situations with HUGE spawns naturally favour AoE-centric Blasters. Situations with few hard targets, like multi-boss spawns, highly favour single-target Blasters, as AoEs are just a waste of resources in this case.

Generally, pick your Blaster, pick your build and play accordingly. If you're Fire/Fire or AR/anything, play for AoE and build for it. If you're energy/Energy or Ice/Ice, play for single target, even if can fudge AoE.

One final note: number of AoEs does not equal AoE power. Radiation Blast, for instance, has three AoEs, but all three together do about as much damage as Fireball + Fire Breath.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Yes that can. Airhammer is a single target Nrg/Nrg specialist. I hated Explosive Blast and I hated Energy Torrent. I did not like throwing mobs all over the map, not to mention how underwhelming Explosive Blast is as a power IMO.

So Airhammer was built with the ability to do several things. He is a hover fighter. Three slots in hover and in swift allow him to move over a battle field quickly. Secondly he has three damage range HO's in EVERY ranged attack. Combined with Boost Range it give him ridiculous range. Secondly he has all his melee attacks except Stun.

He is a boss killer. It was very common when I played him a lot years ago to hear on teams.. Yo Air.. Boss... It was expected of me to take down the most dangerous foe.. A Boss.. The annoying Avalanche Shaman.. The Malta Sapper.. etc etc.. He also bought very good damage in AV fights.

So YES a single target blaster can be very valuable in teams but a lot of times unfortunately the team doesnt recognize the value.

I have a lvl 50 Sonic/Em blaster, I use him for PVP and is built as such. I recently joined a new SG and they like to run BM a lot and so I joined to see if I could pick up some recipes and a little extra coin.

I focused on the boss's(lvl54) and after about 4/5 clicks the boss's go down one after the other. By the time I'm done taking out the the boss's the rest of the team in done with minions and luets and on to the next mob.

I have been a scrapper for about 90% of my time on CoH and while teaming I focus on the boss then move down to minions. I can say I enjoy ST Blapping way more then scrapping and I feel way more effective as long as a Tank or troller can keep the damage of me. Good times

Well, the extremes would be a Blaster that concentrates totally on AoEs and does the maximum damage to the largest amount of foes at once, which can be helpful to a team, and the Blapper that concentrates on his melee attacks as well as his single target attacks to maximize the damage that can be done to a Boss or AV. Either is going to be useful. But there's a lot of room in between to have some AoEs and some melee attacks, and concentrate mainly on your single target damage.

I'd agree with most here that it depends on the player. It seems like single target damage or even close range AoE damage is the domain of the Scrapper, but I don't see why they have to be mutually exclusive. The single target Blaster will draw less aggro simply by virtue of his more concentrated attacks, and as mentioned, he has both Aim and Build Up to spike his damage. He's capable of doing far more damage in a short period of time than the Scrapper. Possibly, he would only be outmatched by that by the Stalker, and the Stalker wouldn't have the potential for ranged AoE.

I can see overlap, but I wouldn't turn anyone down for my team over any other, unless I got to see them in action and concluded they were an idiot and a threat to the rest of the team.

For my Sonic/EM blaster (a 50, fwiw), I had the same concerns as the OP for a while.

Eventually I reconciled that by spamming Howl, and positioning myself for max effect with its cone and taking out the nastiest single targets in a spawn, one by one.

Later, with the epics, you can grab Static Discharge and chain it with Howl, again using ST attacks as needed.

Eventually the concerns I had about being the "ST blaster" went away. Take out the high prioriy targets and that's a great teammate.

Oddly enough, I just had someone badmouth single-target blasters for the first time last week.

I joined a PUG Positron task force with a hover-blapper. The leader made a comment about single-target blasters, but kept me on the team as filler.

During the Circle of Thorn missions, I kept hovering over the Agony Mages' earthquake and trapping them in knockdown/blap combos. Around half way through the TF, the leader sent me a tell to apologize.

So that's my warm-and-fuzzy story of the day.

Rush_Bolt's Guide to Picking Teammates - Blaster Version
Q. Can you kill things?
A. Yes

Congratulations, I want you on my team!

This has been another edition of Rush_Bolt's Guide to Picking Teammates.



So, um... yeah. Anyone who turns down a Blaster because they're "single target instead of AoE" is a dummy.

Still waiting for his Official BackAlleyBrawler No-Prize