Buff Assault Rifle

I actually see it the other way around. Blasters were given one purpose - damage. In fact, I hear they were originally listed as Range/Melee, rather than Range/Support. As such, they had 18 powers to devote to attacks - too much to fill in with useful powers and not repeat them too much. So they were given "chaff," or as I like to call them CRAP powers. Things like damage auras, things like Burn, things like Smoke Grenade and on and on and on. Assault sets are kind of like what Blasters are, only one set, so there isn't any room for crap powers, hence why they have only the good ones.

What I'm continually amazed with when it comes to Blasters is how they managed to get not just useful, but ESSENTIAL powers staggered AAALL the way into their Epics. Like Epic shields. Yes, they're cool. But are they cool enough to exist for only the last 5 levels? Or the Epic control powers, so good you have to be 41 to get them. These are not things you should have to wait on esoteric pools to provide. These are things that should have been IN THEIR POWERSETS. Screw Burn. Give me Fire Shield. Keep your Lightning Field. I'll take Charged Armour, instead. Or how about Cryo Freeze Ray. Or Sleep Gas Grenade. Or Surveillance. Or, hell, Body Armour. I can think of, like, four things I'd drop from Devices in a heartbeat if I could get a power that isn't a wasted power pick.

And you know what the worst part is? This will NEVER be fixed. Ever. The Blaster secondaries are set in stone... Were set in stone six years ago. They're not changing. Ever. And I can keep requesting that Epics be opened earlier until I get carpal tunnel syndrome, but that won't happen, either. Can't let players take the awesomeness that is Torrent too early, can we?

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.

Dom BU is a 64% buff vs 100% buff for blasters
Dom soul drain has a 4 min recharge
P-ray is pretty solid, matched well by surveillance though.

Additionally blasters have aim (which is as powerful as dom BU at 62.5 vs 64%). And defiance which on SO's can easily hit 30-40% damage buff.

No it isn't. Even counting pets it isn't. haha, no.
agreed, though worth being aware that their controls are all active mitigation which directly subtract from damage dealing. Depends on the team. Control is very often redundant as achieving "enough" mitigation to breeze through content is trivial for teams. At that point a blaster is contributing for more than a dominator.
The changes made to dom snipes are likely a test bed for all the other AT's. Unfortunately it is going poorly because doms still don't take (outside of mules) or use snipes by and large. They are hugely counterproductive to their playstyle and rank about 50th of useful things to open a fight with.

Blasters saw significant attention with defiance 2.0 despite being one of the most popular AT's in the game. The popularity of the AT has little bearing on the fixes it receives judging by the attention they received being one of the 'cool' kids and the attention stalkers and doms received being far less popular.

If anything, being popular gets dev attention sooner. Just look at how quickly they caved and gave each AT custom versions of Shield Charge due to player demand, when there have been requests for years to adjust other psuedo-pets so they adhere closer to AT modifiers.

I agree we'll never see the old manipulation sets revamped but I disagree slightly with you as to HOW they should be revamped. Mental and Ice are, to me, what all of the Blaster manipulation sets should be. Yes they have some attacks but their primary purpose is to keep the Blaster alive. Not through passive defenses like melee characters but by allowing the Blaster to control and debuff his foes to limit the number of attacks he faces.

Devices sort of heads that way but suffers a bit due to several very weak powers (cloaking device and smoke grenade in particular) and a general attitude of needing setup time for full effect. If I was designing it from scratch I'd probably give Trip Mine a much shorter cast time (so it becomes more feasible to lay one in combat with care). I'd also see about adding a debuff trap (maybe a poison gas trap with an effect similar to poison gas arrow from TA) and maybe even seeker drones (the low magnitude AoE stun is similar to powers in other manipulation sets.

I think the problem Electricity Manipulation is that it's a sapping set without reliable sapping. Doing it from scratch I'd change Lightning Field to do more endurance drain and less damage and add in Short Circuit (or a very similar power) replacing either a melee attack or Power Sink (I'd then remove Short Circuit from Electrical Blast and give it Static Discharge instead). The general intent is that a /Electric Blaster should be a good sapper and an Elec/Elec should be a GREAT sapper rather than the current form where /Elec is a so-so sapper, Elec/ is a good sapper and Elec/Elec is a very good sapper.

Fire and Energy I don't really have any simple fixes for.

As a side note, I realize a lot of people like the manipulation sets the way they are and I can respect that I simply feel that if I was designing CoH from scratch I'd have taken a different route with most of them.

My advice for /Energy (which I play, she handles pretty nicely but I think i see where you and Sam are going) might be to lower the damage a little, increase stun time as well as stun chance (or perhaps make it 100% on the base attacks) and it would seem good.

But my personal theory about secondaries like fire and energy for blasters is that in contrast to others, they are not about mitigation, but all about bringing the pain in the most intense senses, which is why they both have build up and lots of attacks. They mitigate damage (and well enough or poorly based on your outlook) by killing things faster.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

Yeah, pretty much. My problem is mostly that the CoH ATs were originally designed around a DPS-Tank-Support triad that over the years has become less and less relevant to gameplay. The changes to AT balance over the years have ironed out the worst of it but there is still a general problem that certain power sets (primarily the high damage manipulation sets and the more buff-focused of the buff/debuff sets) can't really be adapted without a major revamp of the set which the devs are obviously loathe to do (after all plenty of people like the set as it is). The compromise the devs seem to be using is to make new sets which have similar functions to the old sets but move away from the DPS-Tank-Support triad (the differences between Empathy and Pain Domination or force Field and Cold Domination are good examples).

Actually, another viable compromise I have in my signature... /plug

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

Fiery Embrace is a 85% damage buff that is up 50% more than either Aim or Build Up. Soul Drain can be enhanced to be up nearly half the time with high global recharge and it is also a VERY solid AoE attack more damaging than Breath of Fire. Surveillance matches Poisonous Ray well? Haha. Surveilance is CRAP compared to Poisonous Ray. Poisonous Ray debuffs more, recharges almost twice as fast, and is more damaging than tier two Blaster powers.

In a fishtank that might be true, but in reality Blasters seldom manage to leverage that amount of Defiance quite simply because a significant amount of time is used to cast slow AoE attacks (that give very little Defiance). And often to hide from aggro Blasters lack of defenses cannot deal with.

I though you did the math and found Fire Doms single target damage to surpass the best Blasters have to offer? Dominators uses higher damage scales on melee attacks than Blasters. I'm pretty freakin sure my AR/Dev Blaster cannot touch even the worst combo among Dominators.

Dominators have little need for secondary effects in their assualt attacks unlike Blasters and is therefore completely free to choose the most damaging set.


Energy Blast has 2 AoEs besides a very slow recharging situational nuke that causes endurance crash. Sonic Blast has 1 semi decent damage AoE in addition to a similar nuke. Electricity Blast has 2 AoEs (one a slow DoT) and a nuke. Ice Blast has 2 AoEs (one of which is a long DoT on a 60 sec recharge) in addition to an endurance crashing nuke. Psychic Blast has 1 AoE in addition to the nuke.

Just to be clear; nukes that causes endurance crash actually lowers DPS unless you have proper endurance tools. Only Power Sink and Consume available in two out of six sets are in practicality able to keep a Blaster going.

Char is a hold that is almost as damaging as regular tier one Blaster attacks (more damaging than some). Control powers can be enhanced to throw at the beginning of combat where the Blaster will have to wait for someone more sturdier to initiate combat any way.

Also, and this is important; a Blaster is seldom able to make good on his offensive capacity (where as a Dominator very often can go full out). Simply too little defenses to deal with the aggro generated, need to position cones vs. moving targets (Doms can simply lock down a field), need to reposition between range and melee (Doms have much less need to keep mobile).

Where as this is certainly true, being versatile is a big plus. Especially if the versatility comes with very little cost in terms of lowered damage. Besides, any AT can bring damage these days. Certain Scrapper combos can even outdamage Blaster AoE while being massively more survivable.


It would be folly to judge snipes solely on experiences with Dominators. That AT is versatile and absolutely not in need of such powers. For Blasters, on the other hand, snipes could be an excellent additional tool if buffed sufficiently (a significant amount).

Heh. Blasters being the most popular choice had to wait how many issues to get their MUCH NEEDED fix? Soon is a relative term isn't it?

I'd agree if Ice Manipulations tier 9, Frozen Aura, got the same treatment as the Tanker version and came with a damage compartment. As is, it's one of the worst powers - if not the single worst power - in the game. Ice Patch could do with lowered cast time, 3.5 secs is too much.

As for Mental Manipulation, Blaster Telekinetic Thrust should get the same level of damage as the Dominator version while cast time also being sped up to Energy Thrust levels (Blasters have need of such a power, but it needs to activate faster to have a chance of repulsing the enemy before he squishes you in melee). Mind Probe also breaks the Dominator/Balance scale in favor of Dominators. Scale back Dominator version or scale up the Blaster version. Scare could be turned into a mag 2 pbaoe to become a kind of Lightning Clap equivalent panic button.

Blasters need to be able to do (AoE) DAMAGE upfront to truly justify a spot on a team. Devices Blasters make good soloists as far as Blasters go, but still perform a lot worse solo than your average Scrapper while harming your team contribution in most instances. There's a thread on proposed fixes in the Blaster forum, they're too numerous to mention here.

Rename Lightning Field to Lightning Faceplant and you get the essense of this power. The instant aggro a squishy get for puny damage is suicide on a team facing challenging enemies. All damage auras for Blasters apart from Hot Feet is likewise counterproductive. Only through expensive defensive IO builds does the power begin to be of any use. I wouldn't build the power around something as esoteric as sapping, but rather add a secondary mitigating effect, like a chance to induce a short mag 2 sleep for instance. Reduce the knockback magnitude of Lightning Clap by half or simply turn it into a knockdown.

No simple fixes to the disaster that is Blaster secondaries, but how about:

Fire: Combustion get significantly lowered cast time. Blazing Aura gets a chance to conflagrate/turn enemy on fire resulting in an afraid effect while something similar to a hostile Blazing Aura affect scared mobs and other mobs in the (hostile aura) radius for a few seconds. Burn could be improved to include resistances (not outright mez protection though) to holds, sleeps and stuns (Accelerate Metabolism levels) for the duration. Perhaps even a slight +recharge, around 10-20, for the same duration? Increase timer on power to balance.

Energy: Energy Thrust get the same damage as Dominator Telekinetic Thrust (scale 1.0 for Blasters and 1.05 for Dominators). Change Conserve Power to something than can be made permanent but yield correspondingly less endurance reduction. Stun turned into a mag 2 pbaoe on a longer recharge. Double duration and double recharge of Power Boost, let KB be affected.

In short; Blasters need more viable alternatives and every Blaster secondary should get more mitigation to help the by far squishiest of all classes to keep from face-planting with too regular and short intervals.

Amen, but a fix as outlined above would certainly be a massive step to truly correct the problems that plague a single AT in the entire game.

First, you can expect the 30 second uptime on the +dam(fire) to get fixed reasonably soon. The Dom and Brute versions were lasting longer than the Tanker version (and the Scrapper version), so it's reasonable to assume they'll be brought back in line. Of course, Doms are also guaranteed to get more from Fiery Embrace than Brutes, Tanker, or Scrappers because Fiery Embrace is in the very same set as a majority of their fire attacks, so they get more irregardless, but I doubt the intent of the Dom version was to make it more potent than BU when no other version is designed to.

Soul Drain is base 1.0 damage scale. Fire Breath (Doms don't get Breath of Fire) is base 1.755 damage scale. To get Soul Drain down to 50% uptime, you need 318% total +rech (factoring in animation times), a not altogether reasonable number to assume for balance consideration.

You're forgetting the fact that Poisonous Ray animates 33% slower, not factoring in the redraw time for the mace (which makes it closer to 50-75% slower). Neither of them allow the -res to stack, so the recharge is largely irrelevant once you get the uptime on the powers to 100% (since both are going to be bad for DPS). The fact that it does damage doesn't really make up for the fact that it's going to eat up the animation time to use a tier 1 blast (1.0 damage scale is a tier 1 blast, as you said).

The "conservative" estimate for Defiance is 20%, even still. The only time you're not going to be managing at least that much is if you're simply not attacking, which isn't generally a winning strategy for a Blaster.

Now, importantly, don't confuse any of this into thinking that I don't think Dominators are more powerful than Blasters. I think the two are intended to be roughly equivalent ATs (both bring damage and control to a party, though the Blaster control contributions are largely irrelevent thanks to their limited nature), though Dominators, at a minimum, are only slightly worse than Blasters at damage and vastly more potent where control is concerned.

well they do have different arachnos guns you can pick from, imo the one with the longer barrel isn't so bad

From playing my blaster and corrupter, maybe the Blaster/Defender version of Flamethrower could be front loaded damage, but I think the Corrupter version is fine due to Scourge. It's end cost could be fixed...maybe reduced to Total Focus/Thunder Strike end cost (18.5)

edit: unless the Mid's numbers are off...just noticed Corrupter and Defender versions of Flamethrower are slightly cheaper on the end...not that much though...

Castle: Brute FE is too long, Dom FE is WAI.

Edited to add: on the larger question of doms vs blasters - if you bring one character, bring a dom. If you bring two, bring a controller and a blaster for better controls, better damage, and buffs/debuffs. Blasters are a team AT.

Huh... I thought that he said that they were both too strong. Either way, seems to me to be a bit more of that "devs love Doms" evidence to throw around. Seems to me a bit weird that the devs would allow FE to be doubly better for Doms than for any other AT with it (and better than BU to boot).

Well, given the option overall, I'd take a controller and a dom rather than a controller and a blaster. You're getting better control, the same buffs/debuffs, and slightly less damage. The damage disparity between Blasters and Doms is remarkably small, even since the damage increases to Doms last year. Doms have more utility and a pittance less damage, even AoE. Remember, those AoE control powers still deal damage and the assault sets aren't strictly ST based: all sets except for Energy Assault have at least 2 AoEs.

The problem with Blasters, as I see it, is a core design conundrum - you give them one singular distinct advantage - damage - yet build their entire AT in such a ways as to be UNABLE to leverage that damage, thus turning balance that is supposed to act in their favour into a weakness they need to contend with. The damage Blasters get acts as the "return" in their "cost vs. return" equation, and unfortunately the "cost" is everything else.

In this regard, Snipes are actually an apt allegory for Blasters in general. They pay with damage for recharge which is quicker than they the frequency they are designed to be used with, meaning they end up paying a cost for a benefit they can't use. A bum deal, as it were.

I keep suggesting shields for Blasters not because I want to turn them into Scrappers with passive defences, but because shields are what gives a Blaster that crucial extra bit of survivability which allows him to leverage his damage at a non-suicidal level of risk. For instance, if you hit Aim + Build Up + Cone + AoE, chances are you'll either be dead mid-way through the cone, or at least so hurt that you WILL be dead mid-way through the AoE. With a shield, you can be reasonably secure in the knowledge that you'll survive this, though with no guarantees you'll be able to survive much longer if that gamble didn't pay off.

Granted, debuffs and control effects kind of do the same thing... But not quite. Passive defences provide protection at no opportunity cost. You don't need to activate them in combat, they don't time out, they don't butt out your actual attacks. Ice Manipulation always gets lauded as the quintessential Blaster secondary, but if you actually try to leverage all of its control abilities, which is Freeze Ray, Bitter Freeze Ray, Shiver, Freezing Touch and Ice Patch (you know, half your powers), you actually end up spending SO MUCH TIME using them that the first ones you use start timing out. Active control always has an opportunity cost, and too much control can easily have such an opportunity cost that it simply overrides your actual attacks. And you can't control your enemies to death. They WILL wake up sooner or later. The point is killing them before they do, which you can't do if you spend most of your time throwing around control effects.

Again, I don't want defence sets for Blasters. But a single shield that most get anyway, and many feel is mandatory is hardly a defence set in and of itself. I honestly feel those shields, most of which only stop smashing and lethal anyway, are something that ought to be integral to Blasters, not esoteric as it is right now.

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.

Damage auras for Blasters is a complete oxymoron. Blasters are designed from the get-go to be ranged damage dealers, and even what melee attacks they have can be used by rushing into melee, doing them and then rushing back out. The whole functionality of the AT revolves around avoiding melee as much as possible and when melee is necessary, minimising the time spent in it.

Then you take a power which is only functional if you stay in melee for long periods of time, and my head starts displaying a detonation countdown timer. Why? Why give a Blaster a power which requires him to play and act utterly contrary to how his AT is designed to play?

Damage auras on melee ATs, that I can see. They spend a lot of time in melee, so the damage it does really adds up over time, and for damage that comes at no opportunity cost, that's not bad. But they get a lot of mileage because their AT function requires them to act in such a way that they get maximum usage out of that power. Ranged ATs have no use for melee-range (and they are) damage auras which are only effective if you spend a lot of time in melee, which your AT, the manual, the player guides and the developers are telling you you SHOULD NOT BE DOING!

Seriously. Damage auras do nothing as self-protection in case an errant enemy runs in. They take a lot of time to do anything, and if you're determined to stand your ground and be punched in the face long enough for a damage aura to matter, then you're going to die. A lot. A Blaster's reaction to being bum-rushed in melee shouldn't be "Oh, goodie, now they'll get insignificant damage every two seconds!" A Blaster's reaction should be to run, hit and THEN run, or possibly control... And then run.

You can attack in melee, you just can't STAY in melee, and damage auras don't really work unless you stay in melee and stay there a lot. It's like handing the player a gun that shoots both ways every time you pull the trigger... Literally like that.

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.

Well, way back when, before all enemies were made sure to be given ranged attacks, ranged was a distinct advantage that provided massive survivability benefits. When Blasters leveraged those benefits too much (generally by hoverblasting), the "problem" was fixed, though it removed most, if not all, of the survivability mechanism that was supposed to be the blasters' counter to scrapper defenses. Since then, Blasters really have gotten the short end of the stick, comparatively.

Rather than trying to give Blasters hard survivability mechanics (+res, +def, etc), I think it would be better to simply make the soft survivability mechanisms that they've already got better. You might make the complaint that it takes too much time to properly do so, but I think that's the problem to address rather than trying to find some way to give Blasters their APP shields earlier. Increase the duration on the control effects and proportionately increase the recharge. You'll get the same contribution with lower animation time consumption (which is a big issue). Modify a few of the powers to be AoE control powers rather than ST (since, in all honesty, an AoE control power on a long recharge would get a lot more use than a short recharge ST control power with the same duration). Also, I'd probably tweak most of those tier 1 immobs to, at the very least, have a chance to hold rather than simply immobilize. As it stands, they do almost nothing for survivability because you're just stopping the guy from hitting you in the face with his bat and instead use his gun.

Yeah, sooner or later it goes back to the "range as defence" argument. I caught a red name saying that enemies still hit harder in melee than at range because they had higher melee damage mods. I don't remember who it was or when it was said, but I remember disagreeing with him, because what's killing me isn't Freakshow swipes and Troll punches, but rather Freakshow blasts, machineguns and bombs and Troll BOULDERS. Oh, and Nemesis chainguns, as wielded by Dragoons who DO NOT HAVE MELEE ATTACKS. Speaking of which: Rikti Drones.

Range may or may not be good for defence some of the time against some of the enemies, but I dare say it's patently obvious it's not good enough overall, not on an AT that's running around butt naked in terms of self-protection/

I doubt that's going to happen without Controller players blowing a gasket, though I assume Dominator players might just roll their eyes.

But, yeah, that would work. THE biggest problem I always mention when it comes to Blaster self-support is that control is a double-edged sword - the more time you spend applying control effects, the more those control effects expire because you have very little free time left over to do other stuff, like kill things. The point of control effects is not and has never been to STOP damage. All they can do is delay damage, potentially until you can take out the source, usually until you're part-way there. As such, the more free time a Blaster gets in-between controlling, the more those control effects mean and the lest it sucks to try and use them.

Provided we keep their self-stacking window, I actually wouldn't mind seeing an increase in the recharge and duration of control powers. I was actually shocked to see Bitter Ice Blast lasting only 8 seconds when it takes something like a third of that just to animate. Of course, Bitter Ice Blast is a corner-case head-scratching power, but the point remains.

So, yeah - fix control to where it's viable, fix Blaster secondaries... SOME Blaster Secondaries. How would we help sets like Energy Manipulation and Fire Manipulation, however? They don't have duration-bound control to speak of. This is actually where an old question I keep bringing up comes into play - what are Blaster secondaries supposed to do? I've never been able to get a consistent answer to this, and I can't figure it out on my own.

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.

Agreed. The problem is that for the most part doing so is impossible without tossing the cottage rule out the window (with all that implies including forced respecs for affected characters). Personally I'd like to see it done anyway but I'm not the person who'd have to deal with the consequences (primarily huge forum flamewars and a possible drop in subscriber numbers).

On the specific subject of the T1 immobilizes the problem as I see it is they are a power that is actually pretty useful at low levels where keeping enemies at range reduces their damage output by a lot as well as doubling as an extra attack but that utility drops off a lot at higher levels where enemies have more ranged attacks and your attack chain fills out enough that you don't need an extra damage power. The primary exception is Web Grenade which remains useful at level 50 as a single target debuff. Adding a hold proc would work but instead you could lower the damage and add a useful debuff to them.

Adeon's guide to making a Blaster secondary:
1. Make a list of all of the pre-existing single target controls (except for ST immobilizes), PBAoE controls, melee attacks, damage auras and a few of the weaker debuffs associated with the desired theme
2. Write them on the dartboard
3. Throw seven darts at board, re-throwing until all seven hit a unique power
4. Add a single target immobilize as the T1 and Build Up
5. Order the remaining powers in roughly the order they occur in their parent set
6. ???
7. Profit!

Yes I did. And you can be sure I went through and compared a heck of a lot of toons before coming up with that assessment.

You should also understand that a higher than perma hasten fire dom capable of running blaze>incin>blast is an outlier.

You should also understand that ideal situations don't pop up nearly as often as they do on paper. In practice when a huge portion of your damage is coming from uncontrollable pets your damage is often spread out and unfocused. That doesn't necessarily decrease your actual damage output, but it can and does make it a lot less effective in actual play.

I've mentioned it in other threads that there is only one assault set that can put out numbers to keep up with the big boys (scrappers/blasters) and that is /fiery and it requires decent recharge to get there. Certain synergies may allow it to outperform them in some situations, but then again there are situations that will elevate blasters and scrappers to their damage cap, which is higher than a doms. I'd say in actual gameplay hitting damage cap is more common than the unique situations where a /fiery dom will outshine a blaster. The other assault sets don't even come within snipe range of a high recharge /fiery. That may put up a flag that /fiery is too good, but it was that way before the revamp too and Castle actually gave /fiery a higher ceiling with his changes. So hopefully it is safe.

*Yes I saw your mention of ar/dev. I bet it does more damage than a mind/psi. In fact I know it does. But I certainly never said there wasn't overlap between the two AT's. And in this very thread discussing how Assault Rifle is underpowered, one in which I've given my suggestions on how to improve it, you are seriously going to cite AR as proof?

My hope is that it actually goes the other way and the scrap/tank version is increased to match the brute/dom version.

I'd normally place the safe bet that a reduction was going to happen, but in this case Castle recently agreed he'd take a look at fire armor for scrappers. A large focus of that thread he was responding to was about the damage disparity between Shield and Fire. Now granted I showed and was later supported that SC was vastly overperforming and will probably see a sizable reduction I still hold hope that he will see fit to give a tiny bump to the offensive nature of fire rather than go with the boring approach of closing the survivability gap to within closer range of the other armors.