Blaster vs Defender damage output

I've only played a defender and a Blaster to level 12 or so. but I really cannot tell much a a difference in damage output of my AR/Device Blaster and my Traps/AR Defender. The Defender however is much more hardy and dies much less often.

I've been told that in early levels that the archtypes deal about the same damage and later levels the damage level is much more noticeable. My question is how much difference between a blaster and defender with AR skills slotted the same way?

Is there a detail chart anywhere, I am about to send my Blaster off to an alt server, but I will be disappointed if my defender becomes a, well, a defender and cannot actively take part in offensive maneuvers. I hate being on back line support.

While on the subject Damage output of Brutes vs Offensively slotted Tanks at later levels pre level 15 I can not tell much difference, only slightly favoring the Brutes, but tanks being a little more sturdy.

It's all about the AT damage modifiers which can be found at http://www.redtomax.com/data/modifiers.php

Quick example for base damage difference between a defender and blaster with the same attack:

Blaster ranged damage mod: 62.562
Defender ranged damage mod: 36.147

Attack: Slug: 1.64 lethal damage
Blaster Slug: 102.602 lethal damage
Defender Slug: 59.281 lethal damage

Now add enhancements to the attacks. Say maxed ED capped damage buff of 95%.

Blaster: 200.074
Defender: 115.598

That's not even considering blaster's defiance adding even more buff or defenders using dam-res debuffs.

Brutes and tanks get a similar melee damage mod, with brutes being slightly lower, but brutes get fury which can run close to a 200% damage buff and have a much higher damage cap.

It takes until about level 20 for the differences to become fully apparant.

Factoring in defiance the blaster will probably be running at close to double the damage of the defender.

The -res debuff from the acid mortar will help close this gap somewhat, but the defender is still significantly weaker post 20

I do know that 8 defenders > 8 blasters in most cases.

Outside of shared Targeted AOE attacks, such as the Ice Blast Ice Storm and Blizzard, you'll find that defenders have about 45% to 55% of the damage a blaster has.

E.G. : Aimed Shot
@50: Blaster = 82.58
@50: Defender = 36.15

e.g. : blazing arrow
@50: Blaster = 161.72
@50: Defender = 93.44

e.g. : Proton Volly
@50: Blaster = 175.17
@50: Defender = 101.21

e.g.: Cosmic Burst
@50: Blaster =132.63
@50: Defender = 76.63

e.g.: Psionic Lance
@50: Blaster =172.67
@50: Defender = 99.76

Blaster's also get defiance which allows them keep attacking even when mezzed, as well as boosts their damage rate.

On the other hand, some defenders also get anti-mezzes, such as Radiation Emission's Accelerated Metabolism which offers high mez resistances, and the Dispersion bubbles on Sonic and Force Field which offer mez protection. Defenders also get strong buffs and debuffs, some of which they can cast on themselves.

In all fairness, the defender's buff / debuffs aren't quite enough to make up for the lack of punch a blaster has. Enervating Field might be a great resistance debuff, but it's not quite great enough to make a 50% damage difference.

I'm working the numbers out in my head, but eying the animation timings on Sonic Attack, I'm not sure a sonic / sonic defender or a rad / sonic defender would be able to stack enough resistances to make up the damage shortfall either.

If you want the exact modifiers, Redtomax has a full listing:
http://www.redtomax.com/data/modifiers.php

and the wiki has the level 50 values:
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Blaster
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Defender

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bellen I've only played a defender and a Blaster to level 12 or so. but I really cannot tell much a a difference in damage output of my AR/Device Blaster and my Traps/AR Defender. The Defender however is much more hardy and dies much less often.

I have both an AR/Dev and a Traps/AR as well. I love my AR/Dev Blaster because he was my first character (and my first 50) and I play him a lot but I can honestly say that if Traps had been available and I'd made the Defender first I probably would never have played the Blaster. Blasters do almost twice the ranged damage of Defenders so from that point of view the Blaster is a lot better (even factoring in Acid Mortar). The problem is that Devices is a rather weak set when compared to the other manipulation sets and doesn't add a lot to play. Traps on the other hand is all kinds of awesome. It's much less specialized than a lot of the other defender sets and requires a bit of thought in terms of positioning but it contains a wide variety of powers to give you the right tool for whatever job is needed.

If you want damage I'd say stick with the Blaster but reroll him with a different secondary (Mental and Energy are both good choices or Ice if you want more mitigation). On the other hand if you want a gadgeteer type character then stick with the Traps/AR. It's got a good mix of Damage and Mitigation that make it able to solo reasonably well as well as being an asset to most teams. You'll also get a lto more use out of your Traps powers than you would out of the Devices powers. Plus it has pretty comprehensive mez protection at level 8, who can say no to that?

the damage differnce while solo is 90% in the blaster's favor, but 10% of the time some defender builds can actually outdamage some blaster builds due to the nature of Debuffs vs certain targets.

for example, you have an AV that has 50% resistance and regens 50.

a blaster with raw power lets say shoots out 200dps, that will be halved to 100 by the res, and -50 from the regen. The blaster now shoots out 50dps vs the AV.

a defender could be pushing 100 dps, but also has the benifit of -resist and -regen. Lets say the defender eliminates the resistance (still doing 100 dps), and halves the regen, and now does 75 dps.

Nowadays, it may be a bit of a stretch as even my own blaster, who has only a purple pet set in Voltaic Sentinel, and is elec3 (not the *best* damage oriented blaster) can pump out 270ish DPS on a good day, so blasters may just have the raw power to close the gap in some cirumstances like this (he'd be doing 85 dps in this example, with no debuffs to aid him).

Another note is some blaster sets offer these debuffs, such as sonic/ and /mental. So the vast majority of the time the blasters will flat out beat a defender in terms of damage, but there are cases where the defender can shine as well, and even out-damage some blaster builds in the long run (but this is rare).

Another boon however is that defenders can damage foes much more safely also due to debuffs, but thats a slightly different story.

player99: Your math is either bad, or badly explained. I can't tell which.

OP: The difference is pretty huge. AR/Dev is an unusual type of Blaster (and one I personally do not prefer) in that it gets neither Aim nor Build Up. Those two powers [one in the primary, one in the secondary] give you nearly double damage for a brief period of time, which is usually "the entire life of almost the entire enemy spawn."

My acid test for whether you'll like a Blaster or not is this:

Roll up a Fire/Energy blaster and level them to 8. Should take you two hours or so.

Take Fireball [at 2], Build Up [at 4 or 6] and Fire Breath [at 8].

Go to Perez Park and run along the street. Find a nice close spawn of even or +1 enemies, mostly minions. Target one in the back, hit Build Up, Fire Breath, (run up until it goes off,) Fireball.

If you liked that, you'll like Blasters.

ATs all run about the same from about 1-10, gradually differentiating until it becomes more obvious at 20. From 22 on, after you get SO's, the innate differences are exaggerated until they become the most important factor, depending on how you have slotted Enhancements.

For instance, a Brute won't seem that much weaker than a Tanker in the early levels, when you have only a few defense toggles, don't have them slotted, and don't have the Endurance to run them anyway. Post 25, with Stamina fully slotted, and lots of Enhancements in your attacks, the Tanker can become almost unkillable. Then you really begin to see the difference. Even three slotting his attacks, though, the Tanker won't do as much damage as the Brute, because the base on which his damage Enhancements are built are just that much lower.

Fortunately, you also tend to become more balanced in other ways. Blasters get some defenses when they get up to really high levels, and with your Tier 9 Defense, both Tankers and Brutes can stop worrying about defense and just start plastering foes. And with most Defenders, you should be able to get some damage boosting powers that in the high levels will make Blasters look at you and turn green.

So while it depends a lot of build, the weak spot for many ATs is the late teens and early 20s, when they've just started to get SOs, but don't quite have enough to make it worth it. That's when the Defender will really feel like he's plinking away at the foes with a slingshot, and the Blaster will feel like if a foe sneezes on him hard it's a trip to the hospital.

The only case where I've really felt like a character was *REALLY* performing dramatically better than another character at really low levels was a Brute. Fury is awesome at all levels, but at really low levels, nothing *EXCEPT* Fury is awesome, which puts the Brute head and shoulders above pretty much anything else.

For the Blaster vs. Defender comparison, yeah. . . by mid 20's at latest, you should really be noticing the differences hugely.