Old Story - Same Gripe - Assault Rifle coupled with Devices Just no Ummph

Okay, this is the only response that actually addressed what I had said, so I'll speak to it.

This is just more evidence that you've not played AR/... I'm guessing not Energy/ either. M30 and Buckshot have what's called knockback. People who are knocked back cannot attack back for a few seconds. My point before about lining up your shots is you get set up so they are between you and a wall. Now, if you're that close to them and Flame thrower, you die! How does having them on the ground before you torch them make you *less* safe?

Your bias is overwhelming your responses to where they don't address the point in the first place. I mean, you commented before that Fire is safely firing all of its attacks from 40' away. But from 40' Fire Breath only hits the front line of a mob, and you're completely within range of ALL their ranged attacks.

*skeptical eyebrow* I'll assume yours is bigger because you insist on adding in movement, which isn't a problem if your jumping around.

The point was that it your method for measuring them how you were was inaccurate because of their starting positions. AR gets to start earlier, so the casting time on Trip Mine is less severe.

I would consider the redraw to be the biggest annoyance for AR because there's nothing you can do to get around adding it in. 2 (1 second to draw the weapon, another to stand there like a slack jawed idiot trying to remember how the bloody thing works) or so seconds every time I need to reach into my utility belt is a ****ing chore.

Except that in this case your movement is taken care of during your animation. By the Time Full Auto finishes the enemies should be nicely on your *** again, which is why you'd want to use Buckshot to knock them back and *hope* your team has arrived. Otherwise you'll probably die.

You can use Trip Mine in a team scenario, but it demands you really know what you're doing and what all the enemies are doing. I find it easier to pull off with Controllers rather than Tankers because Tankers can't stop AOE's being fired at them every half second, which usually means I need to get behind the outer rim of his new buddies to set it off.

And after all this you still have to redraw your damn weapon again.

Their entire ranged arsenal does not have this huge reach you are describing. Between the KB and the distance you will have mitigated enough damage for this to be viable, which I only know because I've done it.


Blaze's damage is over a 4 second period, which cuts down it's DPS quite a bit. I figured you were using it on the boss though. What I'm *not* sure of is how you've managed to survive this long when you started from 40 feet away.

Slug and Burst aren't bad attacks at this point in the chain. With any recharge Buckshot should be making an appearance again as well. Most of the time, however, the AR/Dev would be leaving to go set up the Alpha for the next spawn while the rest of his team cleans up.

He's applying a different tactic. That doesn't mean he isn't contributing the damage, and without the rest of the team he can't apply the Alpha and forget. Not without Flash Freeze, anyway. Starting earlier doesn't stop him from being part of the team.

So, what, you're planting a flag in the discussion and declaring yourself the winner? If only I had thought of that first.

I don't know... you thought of "counter every single argument" first. I think that makes you the winner.

If you put the flamethrower at the end of chain you are even slower at killing things and contributing less damage than the fire/blaster.

Let me get this straight.

You need the AR/Dev to start first, have particular arrangements of enemies, need the team to follow you to clean up your aggro, need the setup time not to count for AR/DEV,

and you are accusing me of being biased ?

No I am asking you to support your statements. So far it has gone something like this

To which I reply

And then get

And then out come the detailed numbers
Run to front of spawn
.5S
Trip Mine
5s
Flamethrower
7.33 s with DOT for 7.1s


Just to show that not only was the calculation done but it was actually slanted in your favor.

And that would show a lack of aim and build up is hurting the combo how ?

I have no problem teaming with my AR/Dev blasters.


My 2nd or 3rd 50 was a Eng/Eng blaster. Now there's a lot of knockback!

Too much Knockback?
Please. Just learn to use it to your advantage - or comic relief.

Yeah, too bad.
Instead you get a Targeting Drone so your ACC is increased ALL THE TIME.

Oh, I know, "extra ACC does not equal extra DAM".
First, hitting more often does usually yield more damage.
Second, Time-Bomb is like a second nuke and Auto-Turret - I believe - is the only Blaster pet!

Yes. SOME players will wait for you to put down all 10 mines. Maybe not every battle if things are going well, but SOME will wait for you to set-up to beat down a "big bad".

Yes. Even if the others rush ahead, you can still put down a trip mine. Heck. If there is a real Tank (one with Taunt) on the team, then you can set a trip mine down right next to him ... repeatedly (assuming that they are Taunting and keeping the agro).

You must be really bad at placing trip mines. Even if you set them where you start before a battle starts, you should be able to lure a couple back to the trip mines - unless there is a Tank on the team who is doing a really good job. Just snipe at one of the enemies on the fringe. They are less likely to have been Taunted and your Snipe damage should draw agro. Lure the enemy back onto your trip mine. Smooth and easy.

I have never been asked to change from my AR/Dev blasters. I've never been asked what blaster set I was and been turned away from a team because I was a AR/Dev Blaster. I've never been asked to change my character when I was on a team because I was an AR/Dev blaster at the time.
Maybe this has something to do with what server you are playing on, or the fact that you are trying to give the inviter other options that makes them think that you don't really want to play the AR/Dev.
It also seems that there are some that you normally team with that really like your Archery char for some reason. Maybe if you played with them with your AR/Dev more you could figure out how to make them like it as well - or maybe they would let you team with them with that char since you are friends....if they are your friends.

Sounds server or maybe even "crowd" specific.
I'm playing to have fun. I like to defeat the enemies. I like to work to avoid any of my teammates falling in battle if possible.
However, I am a big fan of "no tanker/no scrapper" teams and PuGs. I'm not into exploiting the game through farming, power-leveling, door-sitting, or any other kind of exploitation.
Practically, any combination of powers can work together to make a good team. I will yield the fact that Debuffs and burst damage are necessary to take down some AVs and Giant Monsters.

If you say so. I see no numbers here to back up what you have to say. I just see you saying that that is the fact.
Maybe you should try another server and avoid the number-crunchers and try to have a good time playing a AR/Dev blaster instead of trying to mini-max yourself to some kind of self-vindicating uberness.
Just let go. It isn't going to kill you to enjoy just playing the game. Maybe you will find out that that is the whole point.

How many character slots do you have open?
Make another character or if you really just don't want that character on that server - move them to another one. I'm guessing that you will have more fun with your AR/Devs blaster on practically every other server - if you are on the one that I think you are on.

Like using Cloaking Device, Smoke Bombing an enemy, and going in and setting a Time Bomb?

Or Caltrop-ing a group of enemies area, Igniting the ground under their feet, Web Grenading one down, Flame Throwering the group, and then blasting them with Buckshot (then repeat)?

And let's not forget the Trip Mines. Really. Those are kick butt, the reason that they aren't so much so sometimes is because other players lack patience. The fact that the other players don't have patience doesn't mean the set is lacking - it means that the other players are lacking patience.

What server are you on?
What are you saying?

you: "LFT"
other: "LFM"
you: "Can I join your team? But let me warn you in advance that I'm only AR/Dev and they kind of suck."

Honestly, I've never run into this kind of behavior.
And how can you tell that they are "looking around and waiting for someone else to sent them a tell, hoping to fill the spot" or what they are doing?

You know, I get the same kind of behavior with "some" of my characters. It usually isn't related to what sets I'm playing (unless someone can click on you or you tell them what their sets are, they can't even check until you are teaming AND in the same zone as them) or ever what level, side, or server that I'm on. Its just I have some characters that are unlucky at teaming.
It could be the names I picked or just that those characters are just really unlucky and have a hard time finding or recruiting for teams every time I try to play them.
When they do finally get going on a team, the teams usually perform well, but then it's back to having bad luck with that same character again until they finally "luck out" again.

And this was melee characters with limited range complaining that one of their attacks was knocking there enemies out of their attack range where the enemies could then get up and attack them (from range).
A Blaster doesn't tend to knockback their enemies outside of their range of attack. In fact, a blaster that knocks back an enemy often will have enough time to Snipe that same enemy if they are slotted in a manner to do so.

The set is good as it is.
DP is different from what AR is. AR was created over 5 years ago.
In some ways, I like AR much more than DPs.

Enough with the Ammo envy. People have already complained that DP doesn't have a Snipe.

Wow. I wasn't aware attacks did less damage if they were later in the chain rather than earlier.

Perhaps you should read what I wrote. You may be confusing what I said with somebody else. Either way, cleaning up the aggro was more relevant for the Fire/Ice combo which you laid out which gave no regard for mitigation. The AR/Dev may be able to facilitate way better alphas by leaving some of the mob behind, but that's not to say it's the AR/Dev's aggro. Besides you ended your chain with rain of fire lol... Making the team clean up your mess is clearly not a concern for your example.


Actually you are again comparing apples to illusionary oranges. Please consider real world attack chains. You may want to give AR/Dev a try, cause I know you could build a better case against them if you had an idea of how to play them.

Talen never gave a response, but Pazerwaffen did
He was the only one who commented. I would venture to guess others would say the same. The thing is though, I would wager that once the DEV's review the numbers for DP, I think it will receive some Positive improvement. Its a new set only out weeks. Every new set goes through this.

Even IF it where correct. Then what can be concluded is AR Device is the 2nd worst Blaster set just following DP Device. Hmm amazing..

I am big enough to admit I might have chosen the wrong wording when I used the viable spec. But nonetheless the rest still stand. Posters jump on one or 2 words another poster puts out there, but everything else is ignored. When you can't refute another posters comments ( and I don't mean mine ) in a thread, his whole comment/post is ignored as if they never happen/posted. It's like "Oh man that guy makes sense, I don't have anything to refute what he is saying. Hey you know what let me just go after that guy again for using the word viable spec."

And you know it's not even one person posting on how you should stealth toe bomb and jump away. It's 3 or 4 people saying the same thing at different times. They come into the thread, don't really read it. Post on all the gimmicks you need to do to run your AR Device. What each power is good for. What gimmicks you use to use them effectively, what powers not to take ( Time Bomb ) . But if they would have taken the time to read they would have clearly seen that I stated I understand the concept and methods of AR Device. Trust me I get it this game isn't that hard to grasp. It's fixed powers with up to 6 bubbles in each power. I get it.

As someone else mentioned and pretty much even my title insinuates it. This is a on going debate that pops up every few weeks here. I would have to guess everyone who post about AR Device over the years is wrong, its like a phantom pain. You think you have it but its all in your head, make believe.

Well I am glad they are gonna have this DEV chat on Friday. I have never jumped into one, but I am gonna try my hardest and best to get a AR Device question in and pray they can give some insight on this.

I will end with this. If we get lucky enough to get some SOLID info that reflex's I am wrong. Then I have no problem being told I'm a Donkeys backside. But rest assured if it goes the other way.. OH BOY. You guys better be big enough to eat some crow. Because I am gonna hand it out fast and furious.

When what they are cast on is already dead, they certainly do.

You do recall we were talking about putting flame thrower a very long casting, very slow damage over time attack at the back of the chain.


You have no need to mitigate damage from the dead. Thats the great advantage of finishing up by killing things.

Rain of fire, is just a bonus for the fire/ice. It gives him a nice way to start hitting anything left.

That chain was Warkupo's. Take it up with him if you feel he can't build real world chains and has no Idea of how to play them.

So far everything you have suggested stated or laid claim to hasn't even been in the ball park. It's very hard to take anything you say seriously when you suggest laying down a 12 second lead up prior to launching an attack on a fast moving task force.


The damage numbers may not be everything but they are a damn big part of it. When you talk about needing perfect timing, its not the fire blaster that is having to hop around like a jumping bean on speed or having to continuously arrive early and leave early.

Even this misses the point. Not only did you not give me Full Auto while allowing your first chain to have Build+Aim, but you still refuse to grasp the concept that the AR/Dev has arrived way before the Fire/Ice has. If you really want to build a fair chart, based upon the activities of a competent AR/Dev, you need to not only post activation times, but when the Fire Blaster actually gets to the battle, and then compare how much total time has elapsed once both of them are finished with their Blast-Fu.

Furthermore, I didn't believe adding Activation Time's together was such a difficult process that it required demonstration. What's more, you already *did* it, so I don't know why I'd do it again afterward other than to show off my awesome addition skills.

However, since you're so insistent that we show our work, I'll go get around to 'later' now.


Omitted Data:

Something else to take note of is that most of the Fire attacks in this list need to take time to travel to the target, meaning you gain about a second or so depending on where it is you are standing. If you are right on top of the enemy the damage will be applied immediately, if not, you're gonna be waiting a small bit. Assault Rifle, on the other hand, has most of its' damage applied as soon as its' powers are activated. The only attacks that need to 'travel' in AR are M30 Grenade, Flamethrower, and Ignite, of which, in this example, only Flamethrower is being used.

The Fire Blast set is being calculated to be applying *all* the extra fire damage. It has an 80% chance to do so. However, the only power which has bonus fire damage in this chain is Fire Ball, so it's not a big deal. I just didn't feel like calculated chance. (I didn't feel like calculating the velocity of each power either and the excess time spent based upon distance either, so at very least I'm consistent~)

Redraw is not being calculated in this chart. Just add +2 after Trip Mine. I had sort of forgot about it by the time I finished and am too lazy to shift all the cells down, but energetic enough to write this sentence about it. (Consistency would be nice, wouldn't it?)

I think I only mentioned it once in my first, but the AR/Dev in these calculations is using Super Speed and Cloaking Device to achieve complete stealth. If you want to set up an Alpha Strike like I'm demonstrating with Super Jump you will need to either use a Smoke Grenade or have a Stealth IO somewhere. Using a Smoke Grenade will also add time to your chain.

Finally, and I know I keep mentioning it, putting Rain of Fire closer towards (or at) the start of this chain would *dramatically* increase the damage that the Fire Blaster is doing. Where it is now gives the AR/Dev a gigantic advantage.

(Slightly Snarky) Analysis

You'll notice that my chart includes the time when the Fire Blaster usually shows up, which is also when the rest of the team shows up. Note that it is not always perfect like this. Sometimes they show up a little earlier, later, and not at all. In the case of not at all it's very useful to have Flash Freeze/Snow Storm from the Cold Mastery pool with you so that your team isn't suffering from crazy blaster shenanigans.

Having an AR/Dev doing this on a team with a Fire/Ice blaster is both a blessing and a curse. The Fire Blaster and all Blasters benefit in that the enemies are already engaged when he gets there, and thus he can start in on his attack chain immediately. Where he suffers is that the enemies are already significantly damaged when he begins, meaning that much of his potential is going to be wasted. For a Fire Blaster who applies his secondary powers 'late' this is especially problematic.

In fact, the major problem with Fire Blast is that a good portion of its' damage is applied later than other Blasters. It's often the case that the Fire Blasters' target will be finished off by either another ally, or that it would be quicker for the Fire Blaster to apply another attack, which sort of trivializes the Fire Blasters 'bonus'.

For example, Fire Breath has an activation time of 2.67, but it takes a second after that for the damage to apply, and this is before even factoring in the distance away he is. While he can initiate another attack once Fire Breath is done animating it's going to be a full second at *close* range before the effect even starts taking place, and then it won't finish for another 2.1 seconds after that. This means that Fire Breath alone takes six seconds to fully apply.

Compare to Flamethrower, which begins applying Fire Damage as soon as the power reaches its' target. After the initial hit it will then apply the damage 7 more times over the course of 7.1 seconds, or every 1.014 seconds. The power will be finished after 9.43 seconds, a little more than 3 seconds after Fire Breath. However Flamethrower also has an angle of 45 degrees vs Fire Breaths' 30 degrees, meaning that Flamethrower will hit more targets. The two attacks are *far* more comparable than you seem to be inferring.

On the subject of Full Auto having a smaller cone, one must also remember that the power has a *much* longer range than most cone attacks, allowing it to hit many targets when at the proper distance. A single range enhancement brings Full Auto from a range of 80 ft to 100 ft, about 20 feet out of the range of most attacks. 2 Range Enhancement brings it to about 120 feet, which is still entirely possible because of it's higher accuracy on top of Targeting Drone. Optimal slotting for Range would probably be 2Damg/2Rech/2Range.

The way the two are utilized here best takes advantage of both Flamethrower's DoT and Full Auto's Range advantage. The major problem with Full Auto is that it roots you for 4 seconds and does very high damage, meaning enemies are more likely to attack you when you use it. After the Joust+Flamethrower, you should land far enough away that the enemies cannot hit you with many, if any, of their attacks, thus negating a large portion of the concern with Full Auto. Furthermore, the Trip Mine you set off is knocking much of the enemies' on their back, further mitigating damage. You want to be far away to maximize your damage potential anyway, so this tactic is a win/win.

Let's again compare to the Fire Blaster. In this example he has done nothing to mitigate the damage in any way. If he's with the AR/Dev he gets to benefit from the chaos and start his chain immediately, but his damage potential will be lower as the AR/Dev will have already applied damage to the enemies. In a team without the AR/Dev, the Fire/Ice Blaster will either need to use his secondary powers to control the spawn, cutting into his potential damage, wait for the Tank/Controller to control the spawn, cutting into his potential damage, or just go balls to the wall and begin firing, typically resulting in his death.

This chain in particular is especially dangerous for the Fire Blaster, as he opts to start with Fire Breath, which has a range of 40 feet, meaning the spawn has probably already started heading towards him before he has even fired off his first power. Chilling Embrace isn't doing much for him as the initial volley of attacks are out of the range of it's effects, and when the enemies *do* get in melee range their recharge being reduced won't have any significance until *after* they have all shoved their respective melee weapons into him. Sure it will be at -14% less damage, but that doesn't mean as much when he's already taken so much of a beating.

He can begin the fight with Ice Patch and Rain of Fire, but he is still going to run into problems. Ice Patch only has a 10 foot radius, which isn't usually enough to hit all the enemies. It slows their movement speed by 90%, and Rain of Fire will cap this at 100%, but that isn't going to stop them from using their ranged attacks to any degree. The knockdown is nice.

His other Option is to use Frozen Aura, but this only stops the minions, and requires melee range. No problem, we'll just stack that with Flash Freeze. Now everyone is nice and tidy... Except that he can't really use AOE's 'less he risk opening himself back up to his first problem, so, again, his potential damage is reduced. You really don't need Frozen Aura with Flash Freeze, however. Flash Freeze, while having a significantly longer recharge of 90s, can still be made just as permanent as Frozen Aura, doesn't require you to be in melee range, has a larger radius, a higher magnitude, a comparable activation time, and is available only 3 levels after you could have obtained Frozen Aura. Sure Frozen Aura can stack with itself after about 10 seconds to hit the entire spawn, including the boss, but that's still 10 seconds of letting the Lt's and Boss pound on you while you restrict yourself to single target attacks. Even then that's not much of a point, really, as the primary reason you'd want to be sleeping the enemies is so that you can separate the boss, and Flash Freeze fills that need far more efficiently.

Then there is Shiver, which is fairly competent. It understands that control powers are usually better when they aren't exposing your tender bits by having a range of 60 ft, and an inexcusably large cone of 135 degrees. You *will* hit everything you aimed it at for a powerful -Rech and -Run debuff. Still, Snow Storm tends to outclass it as well, with it's longer range of 80 feet, a very large radius of 25 feet, no accuracy check, and it's not asking you to reapply it every 12 bloody seconds. About the only mark you might pose against Snow Storm is it's high endurance cost, but calculating the amount of endurance you're using to reapply Shiver every 12 seconds reveals that Shiver is actually costing 0.86 end/s compared to Snow Storm's .67 end/s. FURTHERMORE (I only have one transition word, by the way), Snow Storm is only asking for some EndRedux and perhaps a MoveRedux, while Shiver wants Acc, EndRedux, and perhaps MoveRedux.

That leaves Ice with Freezing Touch, which isn't too bad. You need to be in Melee Range, but it has relatively quick recharge and the duration is pretty good. A boss has about 5 seconds once in melee range to apply damage after which he's pretty safely out of the fight. Assuming 3rech/3hold, you'd want to use it again every 15-16 seconds.

Cold Mastery still has Dull P- I mean Hoarfrost, Hibernate, and Ice Armor. Hoarfrost is a large heal and a large boost to HP, which is very useful for a Blaster who typically has neither. Ice Armor grants about 16% S/L defense when slotted up, which when combined with other powers can build your defense values up in a hurry. More on this later. Hibernate is crap, and I don't like you if you take it.

All of this is not to say that /Ice is bad in of itself. It provides fairly decent mitigation as you're leveling up. The problem is that at 41 any blaster can get comparable, if not better, mitigation, so why sacrifice their secondary when they could have chosen something more useful?

You might argue that you can just pick another epic, but they don't really offer much for an Ice Blaster. Stacking holds can be useful, but Freezing Touch recharges fast enough that you probably wouldn't need too. Resistance is okay but rendered useless by any mez attacks. Do you need more AOEs? Perhaps someone else can enlighten me, but I can't find much use for the other Epics.

With the Ice Pool the Blaster has to spend much of his time sporadically attempting to keep enemies in place from retaliation, which doesn’t leave much time for attacking. He definitely isn’t going to be using the attack chain you provided and living.

While still on the subject of mitigation, it’s useful to note that AR/Dev has the potential to build far more defense than Fire/Ice can, which is incredibly instrumental in surviving more difficult challenges (if that’s your thing), or when using bad attack chains that seem devoid of real world context. Ice Armor provides a rather substantial building point for S/L defense, and when combined with Maneuvers, Weave, Smoke Grenade, and Cloaking Device put you around 39% S/L defense, and 22.4% to everything else without ever having to even touched IO’s. Devices is accounting for 10.4% of this, about 22% of the total defense you need to soft cap. Any other secondary is going to need to find this defense through IO’s, which puts them at a particular disadvantage, and even after that it’s very unlikely they are going to they are going to raise their defense against as many types as AR/Dev can. At best they would likely settle on either S/L or Defense. Such high level of defense can be useful when you want to do stupid things such as beginning your attack chain 40 feet away from a group sized spawn before using mitigation moves of any kind, and for taking on higher level challenges.

My own projected AR/Dev build (expensive), at the time of this writing, has 45.4% S/L, 42.47% Ranged, and 30.5% AOE, with 160% recharge, and all significant powers (as declared by myself). Just an example to show where you can *go* with AR/Dev.

Your initial proposed attack chain was bad, does inferior damage, and offers no means of mitigation. It is so removed from reality or competence that it’s difficult to take you seriously. While you may consider jumping around the mission and possessing sentient awareness of when to leave the group to apply tactics silly, it is a far better and more effective strategy than “stand here and pretend I’m invisible.”


I can't promise you I'll keep replying to you for much longer. Masochistic tendencies aside, this is taking up too much of my time and I'm not really enjoying it anymore.

*Edit* -Fireball is supposed to read:

147.8 + 3*9.38 over 2.1s (0.5s delay)

I'm not big on denouncing the DoT aspect on either, especially because to really notice the difference in play styles the difficulty is probably turned up and the mobs probably aren't going down in one attack chain.

However, I thought juxtaposing these two comments might illuminate why "you must put flamethrower first" was a silly comment. EVERYTHING in fire is a waste when put at the end of an attack chain if this is the case. I'd still put FT third cause I know how to (and love to) use knockback as mitigation. I'd still rather be the living Blaster than the one who kills almost everything fast then dies.

Nice analysis, Warkupo, even if it was slightly snarky. 8P

The fireblaster is managing to wipe things out 6 seconds after getting there. and he is ready to move on to the next spawn before you have even finished your attack chain.

In the team situation it gets even worse.

See the above post and read the log. Maybe try playing a blaster that has buildup and or aim.

No, but that is usually when the allies arrive. This isn't a detriment to the AR/Dev and I've already explained why on numerous occasions. If your entire comeback is "Nuh uh!" then I'm going to go ahead and move on and ignore you whenever you bring it up again (and you will.)

You realize during your little example you never get hit, right? What level enemies are you fighting? Which defender is buffing you? How much defense does your build have? What are all your IO bonuses? Would you like to actually compare it to something other than our own imaginations?

Furthermore, going off my own chart, you are about at the part where you use Fire Ball, or 243 damage. The AR/Dev would be applying Flamethrower in about a second, at 209.7. This is assuming you're using Build Up, which you decided to cut off from your fancy log, mysteriously of course. Without Build Up+Aim, you're actually behind him in damage, assuming equivalent slotting.

However, just this part of your chain has taken you about five seconds. Again, looking at my chart, that means you have added about 2 seconds more, which is likely because it takes your powers time to travel, or because you don't have instant connection to the server, probably a combination of both. Assuming Build UP+AIm Activated imeadiately and you started in optimal range, you have been fighting for around 10 seconds at least . This says nothing for the fact that, if given equivalent recharge as the Blaster in your example, an AR/Dev would have *also* modified his attack structure similiar to how you have.

Would it seriously kill you to post results that aren't utterly skewed?

That's what I thought.

VS your

What you didn't think other blasters could build for defense and recharge ?

But just to answer your questions, the spawn was I believe +0, or +1, and there was no one else involved. I would have to check how much inf a cim minion gives a level 50.

Seriously, I can only guess that both you and Gilia have never played any other blaster but an AR/Dev at this point. You both keep saying things that indicate a horrible ignorance of how anything but AR/Dev works.

That's pretty much what this senseless arguing comes down to. It simply highlights the usefulness of damage boosting powers like Aim & Build-Up for a blaster. 90% of complaints regarding AR/Devices would go away if Devices was given some type of damage boosting power. You don't really hear any complaints from Fire/Dev, or Energy/Dev blasters, because they have Aim in their primaries, which AR lacks.

Provided the Fire blaster uses Aim and Build-up every time it is recharged, they will pull ahead on damage. If the Fire blaster isn't popping Aim/Build-up, their advantage evaporates.

Give it a few months and all the "OMG! AR/Devices sux!" threads will be replaced with "DP/Devices is teh suxxorz!" threads.

I can certainly agree with that. As it is AR is a very good blaster set on its own certainly top tier. If you pair AR with a set with buildup, it has no problem reaching the magic numbers to kill enemies in short order. When you mix it with devices it just gets very iffy.

I already see the shiny wearing off DP. There just aren't nearly as many of them around as there were.

This is taken out of context, and is an example to show where you can go. It is not saying Fire cannot do something similiar with IO's either, but is a simple argument in AR's favor. Furthermore, it's but a snippet of an entire post which spends much of it's time comparing the sets assuming equivalent slotting, but I don't expect you to quote any of that because it might require you to think overmuch.

BIG LETTERS MEAN THAT I'M SUPER DUPER SERIOUS GUYS

Obviously other Blasters can build for defense. Ignoring that /Dev can build for much higher values of defense over many more types for more easily, the point, which you demonstrate a willful desire to stay ignorant of, is that you cannot suddenly pull an IO'd out Blaster from your ***, throw up a random damage table with no equivalent AR/Dev or *anything* to compare it too, and declare that your set is the best because it has more recharge than an example where such things were *not* factored in.

You might as well be comparing a level 50 blaster to a level 20 defender.

Also, +0 or +1 is a pathetic demonstration of your mad damage skillz. But I can't really expect much for someone who doesn't even know how to play a set he's arguing for, as demonstrated by your backwards as hell chains and oblivious nature towards survival. I suppose fighting +0 enemies for so long would have distorted my ability to do anything significant as well, so I won't blame you too much in this regard.

As for farming crap at this low of a threat level, you can pretty much tape together anything with a couple of AOE's and a /Kin and blow through spawns. This isn't so much a demonstration that these dredges do awesome damage, but that their difficulty setting is so low they might as well be soloing.


While I am not going to stop anyone from giving AR/Dev Build up or Aim (assuming it didn't come at the cost of a power I liked, such as Trip Mine.), doing so would cause the set to become far more powerful than any other primary/secondary. As it is, Fire/Ice, when applied to a real world setting, is already doing fairly comparable damage to an AR/Dev while it has Build Up and Aim and even if they started at the same time and even if Fire/Ice had high enough defenses to just stand there without having to worry about mitigation. Considering this is 'FIRE' whose secondary effect is 'moar damage', that's kind of pathetic. When we take away Build Up and Aim from Fire/Ice, and Full Auto from AR/Dev, the amount of damage AR/Dev does OVER a Fire Blaster is significantly (more than twice as much) higher, even when Fire still has Rain of Fire, which should logically get taken away in this example as well.

The most I could see doing while still approaching an idea of balance is giving TD some, very small, persistent damage buff, and even that might be too much.

What really *needs* to be done is solving the redraw issue. That is the number one primary thing that kicks AR/Dev (or just AR in general) in the face.

*edit* - I suck at HTML

Just to clarify, I have played Fire/Ice, too. That's why I knew the examples was such a poor one. Like, of what I've played it may have been the worst example of a chain to compare that you could have come up with.
I have also done Archery/Energy, Archery/Devices, and Energy/Energy. I spent a while with Ice/MM, too. I like blasters, but I'm particular about the sets. I guess I've done a few others, but the first 4 there are the only 50's, and the last the only 40's. Only a few of them are IO'd out.

But, yeah, it's senseless trying to explain this. You consistently only respond to about 10% of what we've said even while we debunk everything you've said. It's clearly subjective to a point, but to say AR/Dev is somehow inviable or a non-option defies all sense, logic, and observation. I don't know how it could be spelled out any simpler than Warkupo already has.