Powerset killed by power _____

Well... There's a reason I never even considered touching Controllers, Defenders and Tankers, and this pretty much is it See, when I look at something like a Blaster that kind of CAN solo with the best of them, eh... I can kind of see pushing for more soloability. When I look at a Defender, though? Nah, I'd just be preaching to the choir. That's not what Defenders are made to do. Blasters, though... I still don't feel they should be as team-centric an AT as people try to paint them.

Thing is, I really don't see damage auras as being very useful with a team, too. I mean, I team occasionally, and every time someone turns on an aura of any kind, it's hell and high water trying to keep everyone and their grandma from dropping what they're doing and trying to kill that one person. I agree, it could be team inefficiencies, but when I do team, it tends to be a grab bag of characters. Three Blasters? Sure, why not? Scrapper and two Tankers? Bring it! Six Scrappers and a Bubble Defender? Best teaming I've ever had!

Basically, damage auras are an aggro magnet. That was kind of what my "team-dismissing argument" was aimed at. Someone mentioned how you could do all that stuff on a team if you didn't draw too much aggro, and I would agree... Except damage auras draw too much aggro. Or do when I've seen them used, anyway.

And you know what? It wouldn't bug me as much if their set-up were somehow different to make their damage more frontloaded, so that I could apply a good chunk of damage for relatively brief excursions into melee, but that wouldn't stack for even better damage if I stayed. I wonder if a toggle with a two-second tick can apply a 10-second DoT that gets overriden with each next tick? That way, enemies would take damage as normal when they're in the aura, but would also take some damage afterwards, as well, possibly filling in the gaps of time when I'm not nearby.

Despite myself, I'd actually like to see damage auras done so that I can use them without removing use from them as they already have it.

Good thing I scrapped my initial reaction post and re-wrote it entirely I appreciate the sentiment, Claws. Thanks.

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.

Once again Arcanaville saves me from having to actually look stuff up.

Jack talked about a lot of things that are no longer true, and some things that never were. Those Nemesis snipers who nailed me from across the map agree with him though. Range is a defense....for them.

I think a lot of the old "Blasters should stay out of melee range" mentality was a holdover form the days of "City of Smoke Grenades." Somewhere around i5 or i6 the Blapper mentality started becoming more prominent. We got better at playing Blasters, we got to know what they could do, we got more survivability to go with it, and more people started getting addicted to the high-risk, high-reward melee Blaster playstyle.

One of my favorite forum quotes of all time came from the early days of the Blapper era, it went something like this: "Any fool can rush into battle wearing full plate armor. It takes a special kind of fool to rush in wearing only gasoline-soaked tissue paper for protection. I am that fool."
Slow melee attacks on Blasters is why kiting was invented.

The old Tenacious and Unyielding difficulty settings were rather wonky for a while there, but I'm finding that now on +0/x4 and +0/x6 I'm getting mostly large groups of minions with a few lieutenants thrown in, and an occasional boss.

We can all agree that AR's single-target damage sucks, no?

The proper response to this is: "You play your way, I'll play mine. The new difficulty settings were designed to accommodate my playstyle as well as yours, so STFU."

Trip Mine is up every spawn, you run in, you set it, it asplodes, you time your AoE right and hit them all before they go flying, lots of dead stuff, profit.

Trying to stick up for solo Blasters and then turning around and saying Controllers, Defenders, and Tanks are poor soloers is... I'm going to go with "a little odd." I enjoin you to consider the virtues of Fire/ or Ill/ or Plant/ and /Rad or /Storm Controllers, Storm/ or Traps/ or Dark/ or Rad/ Defenders, and Fire/ or Shield/ and /SS or /Fire or /Elec Tankers before you denigrate the solo capabilities of those ATs in favor of Blasters. In particular, I'd love for you to point to the powers in any of the sets mentioned that are "useless solo" - I can think of a total of three (and they're not Taunt, O2 Boost, or Howling Twilight). As Arcanaville correctly noted, the ATs smear across a range of capabilities, depending greatly on the powersets and build chosen.

If you don't like how Defenders, Controllers, and Tankers achieve their solo performance, that's one thing, but saying they can't is pretty silly. More importantly, it's provably wrong, especially in comparison to your stated solo Blaster performance. You don't want to say things that aren't true, do you?

There are only 2 secondaries that have a "real" damage aura. Fire, and Electric.

World of Confusion just sucks. I haven't seen anyone yet that actually LIKES that power, andmost everyone that talks about mentions that the proc from the purple confuse set is better than the whole power. It ticks at half the rate of other damage auras, and has a really small range.

Of the two other damage auras, Lightning Field is quite a bit better than Blazing Aura.

My reasons:

Lightning Field has a 20 foot radius - Blazing Aura is 8 feet (I think)

Lightning Field has a (somewhat) useful secondary effect, if you slot it for end drain it can actually provide some mitigation by helping to slow down your enemy's attack rate. This is assuming you take and use Power Sink, which is available later in the same set. Blazing Aura just does damage, and nothing else.

Lightning Field looks a lot cooler. This is just my opinion here, but the electricity around your feet appeals to me a lot more than Blazing Aura's foof---foof---foof---foof effect.

I specced out of Blazing Aura a long time ago on my FIre/Fire and haven't missed it.

On the opposite side, I plan on taking Lightning Field with my Ice/Electric blapper after I get Stamina to offset the extra end drain. I will have 3 holds when my build matures, so I can stack a couple on a boss to take him out of the fight while I clear out the minions. WHen the minions have been cleared I can focus on the boss, who has been held and might even be drained of endurance by the time I get to him. If not, my Electric melee attacks will make sure of it.

Ice doesn't have a damage aura, but it does have a slow aura.

Energy and Devices are completely auraless.

A damage aura being run by a blaster won't overpower the taunt effect of a damage aura being run by a tanker. Any reasonably competent tank should be able to keep agro off you whether you are running an aura or not.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

Soon as I figure out what you guys are doing to get that to work which doesn't involved Inventions, team-mates or more inspirations than tend to drop, I'll be right there with you Thing is, I could never quite get it. I mean, a lot of people have talked about it, but the things they tell me just... Don't seem to work when I try them exactly as described. I don't know where the problem lies.

Well, yeah, +3 and up settings do tend to make for larger spawns, but the old Tenacious was more like +0x2, and every time I've tried that, it's spawn either mostly bosses, or mostly single-lieutenant spawns.

No! Really?

You know, I'd probably shut up entirely if difficulty settings started spawning only the level enemies I picked, but to get an option for that I need to formulate a good suggestion, and that just seems like it's something people will insult over at the drop of a hat.

And, no, I wasn't giving the same attitude there as I am here. More like "Seriously? How does my difficulty setting impact you?" Apparently, people would rather the developers work on adding new zones than adding more difficulty options O.o

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.

That's kind of what I mean. I know everything CAN solo. People have been trumpeting that down my ears for years. Thing is, I've tried to, and while I will admit it's possible... It bores me to tears. In fact, I felt the same way about Blasters before the Defiance changes. They were too weak, too susceptible and not hard-hitting enough, so you had to play them cautiously, and that's just no fun. Right now, Blasters hit hard enough to where I CAN play them aggressively if I so chose, which is both more fun and actually faster to progress as.

Tankers... Well, Tankers put me to sleep. I've tried to play them, and while survival may not be an issue, actually playing the game is dull. Everything takes forever to kill, my attacks take forever to arrive and and I feel like I'm turtling all the time. Defenders just don't move me as the primary reason I play Blasters is damage, and a Defender really isn't all about that. And as far as Controllers go, I REFUSE to play something doesn't have an attack-centric powerset. Call me stupid, but I refuse to, and there really isn't anything which can change my mind.

That, and I dislike the AT's basic design and balance. If I wanted to, say, solo a Defender, I'd have to pick a combo that was good for that, pick only the powers that worked like that and basically go against the grain of the AT. Not my thing. I'd sooner pick something that's designed for it. I've always felt that Blasters were, at least ALMOST, designed for solo play, either intentionally or accidentally. I don't know if I'm right, but at least that's how things feel.

As for Dominators... Getting two-shot by Anathemas just doesn't inspire me. Nothing against the AT, but it's not something I want to play.

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.

Reading this, I suspect that yours is a problem of perceptions and expectations. Partly, I suspect, due to the excellent solo play of a low-level blaster. But that ability never extends past level 25 or so.

Expecting all Blasters to be able to solo as well (or near so) as your average Scrapper is a mistake. There are, however, a good many powerset combinations that can match up to Scrapper in terms of speed and survivability at "normal" difficulty levels. Arch/Em hoverblasters and Ice/Elec blappers are two combinations I have personally experienced to a sufficiently high level as to be able to say that they can solo almost every bit as well as my DB/SR Scrapper. I'm sure other people can suggest others. I've heard excellent things of Sonic/EM, for instance.



And on to the original topic:

For me, it's Shout in Sonic Blast. I have no idea why, but every time I've rolled a Sonic toon I've got to the level I picked Shout and promptly abandoned the character. The sounds, the animation, the seemingly eternal root time... eurg. Not that I'm saying it's bad power. I have no idea as to how much it may or may not rock. All I know is I can't stand it.

You were so close to getting it and then you said this. Replace "Defender" with "Blaster" and it is exactly as true.

Shout has worse DPA than Shriek, Scream, and many Blaster secondary powers. On a Blaster, you're better off not using it in most cases, and can still make a very effective character. On a Corr/Def... yeah, you're stuck with it, but at least on those ATs the -res debuff is pretty hefty and does somewhat make up for the lackluster DPA.

I disagree. Any Blaster I've tried to solo has soloed about average. Some better than others, some more annoyingly than others, but they have all soloed, including combos I was warned against, like Fire/Fire. The problem is that they're irritating to solo... Pretty much all of them.

But if I had to choose the lesser of two evils, I'd still go with irritating over boring. Irritating is unpleasant, but at least it's gameplay. Boring is... Just not fun.

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, "range is a Blaster's defense", all the while making sure that, with few exceptions (XXX Buckshot, for example), the only actual 'defense' that a Blaster got from staying at range was that mobs' ranged attacks generally did less damage than their melee attacks, because the mobs' chance to hit with their attack was just as high at 100' as it was at 10' -- not to mention all the mobs whose attack ranges exceed those of a Blaster's (i.e., getting tagged by return fire from a Malta Gunslinger's pistols while it takes a Range Boosted Snipe attack for you to hit them). If range is a Blaster's defense, then give them something like 2% Defence in PvE for every 10' between them and the mob shooting at them (possibly up to half that for PvP).

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

But whether blasters can function in melee or not is not subject to a vote. Back in the day, there were two camps: the "blasters are meant to be in range" camp and the blapper camp. The mere existence of the blapper camp mostly invalidated the position of the first camp, without them having to say a word. The fact that the devs said blapping was a valid blaster playing style nullified it completely. The fact that players still believe it is a question of perception, not design.

Jack never actually said blasters were supposed to stay out of melee range as far as I recall. He said blasters were given the ability to leverage range as a defense - which is actually true: deliberately staying out of melee range tends (not always, but often) to expose you to less mez and most (not all) critter ranged modifiers are lower, exposing you to less damage. But that's not the same thing, and doesn't mean there aren't *advantages* to getting in melee range: the melee attacks tend to have higher DPA, for one. And since melee and ranged attacks are not exclusive, blaster secondaries don't have to be *full* of melee attacks to legitimize melee range offense: they just have to have enough attacks that have advantages over the blaster's ranged options. Energy Punch, for example, has an (unadjusted for ArcanaTime) DPA of 2.36 DS/sec - higher than essentially all ranged attacks. Adding it to your attack chain is going to significantly improve your damage. It *used* to have a DPA of 2.93, which is practically cheating. If you can leverage melee attacks, either situationally or continuously depending on playstyle and build, you'll end up dealing a lot more damage most of the time (the exception: AoE-focused Fire and AR builds without corresponding AoE potential in the secondary).

Now, you could argue that since the devs clearly didn't factor in activation time or DPA on paper that this isn't a good indicator of intent. Which is fair. But what would be a good judge of intent is the raw damage of the powers, which usually indicates the *intended* value of the attack. And Energy Manipulation's damage starts at 1.96 scale for the lowest attack (energy punch), then 2.6 for bonesmasher, then 3.56 for total focus**. In fact, what a lot of people used to not be aware of (and probably are still unaware of) is the fact that Power Thrust - often considered a throwaway power by many /energy blasters - actually does almost as much damage as thunder kick and other tier 1 melee attacks (0.8). Its telling that a melee attack that is only as good as actual tier 1 scrapper attacks isn't often considered a "legitimate" attack by blasters - because they are used to far higher performance in their melee attacks.

Also telling: the melee attacks in energy manipulation look on the surface like they were borrowed from energy melee, but actually in two cases their damage was radically improved (EP and BS). The only reason they probably didn't do that to TF is because TF already runs up to near the damage design rules for attacks. If they were meant to be primarily "emergency use" powers to deal with things that wandered into melee range, the devs would not have increased the damage, they would have increased the mez or soft control instead. By increasing the damage, those powers don't get very much better at dealing with critters entering melee range directly, but they do get *slower* in recharge, making them less available.


** Sad but true: every single energy manipulation melee attack except power thrust was either equal to or did more damage than Eagle's Claw at release (technically, EC did 0.04 DS more than energy punch and could crit at 5%), and every single EM melee attack except power thrust had better DPA than every single MA attack at release. Meaning every single EM attack was better than every single MA attack at release. But of course that is just the margin case: the best EM blapper attack chain including ranged fillers from *any* blaster primary beat every possible scrapper attack chain for single targets at release, regardless of primary and secondary selection. That's just how good those attacks were - and still are.

If I recall correctly, it has been explained to me that Blaster melee attacks did start out at what was described to me as "pathetic damage but quick recharge," which I would infer meant Tanker numbers, and were changed to be much harder-hitting and longer-recharging later on by player complaint. While this changes nothing to alter current design, it does gleam an interesting insight into the intentions, or lack thereof, of the original Blaster design.

Provided this is true, this has the potential to produce one effect and one effect only - lower uptime for the same return. Granted, this is exactly the same thing people complained about with the Dominator changes - powers became too slow-recharging so they didn't have enough buttons to press, and it still pisses me off that this was changed. Especially on a Dominator, the less uptime I need to deliver decent damage, the more uptime I have to apply control effects. As such, what this sounds like it was the result of is a shift from the idea that Blasters would scrap and so their damage over time only mattered, to the idea that Blasters would deliver fast, surgical strikes with more potential for less uptime.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but it's just this nature of the melee attacks that I draw my conclusions from. A melee-centric character seems like he is expected to push buttons and hit many times with relatively weaker attacks, or at least that was the design prior to the advent of Brutes. A character who CAN deal damage in melee, but whose primary function is not being a melee damage dealer, would instead have a LOT of potential contained within a FEW powers such that this potential could be thrown out all at once, then the situation in which it is useful not required again for some time.

I'll use your basic nuke as an example - nukes are designed to deal a LOT of damage REALLY quickly, but because of their drawbacks... You're really not supposed to be fighting much after you nuke. You could, but it's DESPITE design, not BECAUSE of it. Any time design is such that it focuses high yield in short spans balanced by high recharge, it tells me that the power or set of powers like this are not intended to be cycled continuously, or indeed be major part of cycling attack chains.

I could be wrong, obviously, but you have to admit there's at least some logic to this.

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.

Remember, that's -1x3. And yes, by all means, try it. I don't know what it was that did it, but -1x3 is much easier for me than +0x2, though I don't know if that may not just be because I turned off bosses in spawns. I just know that I used to complain about Malta like little girl, and these days I slap them around like errant stepchildren. I'm not sure what changed along the way, but I guess -1 enemies are easier than one would think.

*by the way*
When I talk about mixed messages, I'm not kidding around. I just wanted to point out that in this very thread a person told me that he's soloing +1x3 spawns with a Blaster solo by staying in melee all the time an never batting an eye and another person told me that Blasters shouldn't be played solo and that they should be very difficult to play like this even at default difficulties. I don't mean to question anyone's position on this, but what do I take away from it?

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.

I'm not sure if you're talking about me, but I don't believe I ever said that Blasters shouldn't be played solo, nor that they can't be played solo. What I said, and what I meant, was that because Blasters in general have a high focus on dealing damage, they benefit from teams that take care of all concerns other than dealing damage, and can get a lot of mileage out of powers that they wouldn't be able to leverage as well solo.

I then went on to agree with other posters that a Blaster built from the ground up around a goal of fighting solo in melee can be quite effective at fighting solo in melee. In fact, I play such a Blaster myself. I doubt I'd be able to get away with what I do with different powersets, or even a different build - and I'm talking strictly about power choices here.

What you should take away is that blanket statements about ATs are not very accurate.

I didn't mean to criticise. I honestly don't know what this whole thing has been trying to tell me, aside from "You're a stupid doo-doo head!" which I kind of knew already. It's not just this thread, it's all over the place. I discard team utility for Blasters, I get called out on it. I discard Blaster soloability, I get called on it. I raise my difficulty, I get called on it. I request for a lower difficulty, I get called on it.

It's not a problem for me practically, because whenever I'm lost as to the things people are trying to tell me, I go out and do my own thing anyway, since it still beats sitting on my hands and wondering about it, but whenever this comes up... I don't know what to say. I mean, I do, but you've seen the result. That's kind of what I mean when I say no-one's given me a good answer - people keep giving me answers, it's just that these answers rarely agree with each other in any big way.

Again, I'm not criticising what you've told me, for which I'm actually quite grateful. But I'm still no closer to figuring out what I'm "supposed" to be doing with all my Blasters than I was before.

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.

Playing at -1 makes a very significant difference. Besides the obvious fact that enemies have slightly lower hit points your attacks do 11% more damage and get a 5% bonus to hit (although most people slot enough accuracy to make this irrelevant) while their attacks do 10% less damage and suffer from a -10% to hit bonus.

The -10% to hit in particular makes a huge difference since it is equivalent to a 10% defense bonus. for a Blaster without any defense (from IOs or such) it prevents approximately 20% of the damage they would normally take at +0 (and the effectiveness goes up substantially with even a little bit of defense from IOs). Combined with the damage reduction at -1 you deal about 11% more damage and take about 28% less. Additionally the -10% to hit also means that debuffs and mezzes are a lot less likely to hit.

I think the point I'm trying to make here is that trying to figure out what to do with a character depends on other factors than that they're a Blaster. Here's the only blanket statement regarding Blasters I can get behind: they do a lot of damage. On a team, that's your only responsibility; you can optimize for it, and get noticeable returns, or you can not do so and still perform adequately. When solo, you have to figure out how to deal damage and not die; the solution to that problem varies wildly according to powersets, enemy group, difficulty, and player temperament, and some Blaster builds just aren't as good at it as others.

Although: one perfectly viable solution for just about any Blaster is to bring a pile of Lucks to every mission, eat them three or four at a time, and just kill everything before they run out. It involves frequent trips to the vendors, but it's nearly universally applicable!

Ohhhhh... -1!!
Yep, my mistake!
I can see how that is more fun. Something has always kept me from going -1, but for fun's sake, I am going to give that a whirl.

As to people saying it can't be done, I think it's proven that they're wrong and as to what you should take away from that, I think you know full well! Your mileage may vary! That seems to be what it comes down to.
Not that this helps in figuring out how you can manage to enjoyably solo your blaster.
Perhaps it is just not for you.
Soloing as a Blaster isn't something I think can usually be done by complacently sweeping through and wiping everyone out (Of course, some powersets may very well be like that, I really can only speak for Elec/Elec and Archery/Dev in an experienced degree).
When/if I get complacent as a blaster while soloing, I tend to get knocked onto the floor.
Greens and break frees and wakies are our friends, but I don't exactly gobble them every second or anything. I do tend to combine everything for those (And blues for a quick pop after a nuke to then use Power Sink and have be right back... but that's usually not even needed while soloing anyway).

I know I've seen my friend not really manage to solo as a blaster. They just don't seem to enjoy being so frail and having to be in that tight situation all the time. A lot of people don't function so well when their health bar isn't green.
And there are plenty of other reasons that certain ATs and/or powersets may not be the right choice for different individuals.

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

I'm still trying to figure out where AR/Dev fits into this, but that's a story for another time

I guess. But that's kind of self-countering, though. I've had a Blaster since before I1, but up until the Defiance changes, he was the only one I had because it HURT to play him. I came close to deleting him twice and just giving up on Blasters altogether, both times for the same reason. Yeah I completed my missions... At four times the time it took ANY other character I'd EVER played to that level (34 and 42, respectively).

It probably didn't help that he was an AR/Dev Blaster, so he was both doing so little damage against so few enemies (again, Tenacious would mostly spawn single lieutenants) he was as slow as a turtle riding a snail, or I was sitting on my hands for long periods of time laying down Tripmines, trying to convince myself that "No, really! I'm having fun here! Honest!" Interestingly, the only time I've ever actually let my subscription lapse has been after I was first done playing with the guy and realising that I hadn't been having fun for the past 10 or so levels. "It wasn't until I'd quit to my desktop and suddenly realised how fascinating my ceiling had become that I realised how bored I had been." to quote Yahtzee (yet again).

Issue Defiance gave Blasters balls, as far as I'm concerned. It turned them from skittish squishes which had to be suicidal and STILL barely break even into monsters who actually felt like they wielded some serious power. It's just a pity they don't actually get to USE that power because just puffing up your chest and flinging AoEs at your enemies tends to get YOU killed the fastest.

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.

I believe that all happened in beta before launch, and while according to the dev formulas that is all that would have done, in actual fact it made melee attacks into extremely powerful attacks due to their ridiculous DPA. The devs' balancing formulas would not have detected that, but it would have turned up in actual playtesting. They wouldn't exactly know why, but they would have seen that the current Energy Manipulation numbers were vastly superior to the original ones.

The main thing that the increase tells me is that the devs intended them to do massive damage, and increased them when the perception is they did not. The devs pattern was (and still is) to be more inclined to ascede to player requests when they are consistent with their initial intent, and resist them when they are not. If the devs intended melee attacks to be secondary to the primary function of blasters, and not terribly important if they did a lot of damage or not, they are not likely to have increased their damage just because players complained. But if they intended them to be valid offensive options and the players were saying the perception is they were not reasonable options, the devs would have been far more likely to increase their damage explicitly to make those powers appear to do what they were intended to do.

The truth is the blaster secondaries were rushed. The devs were working against the clock and tried to reuse whatever they could. Blasters were supposed to be Ranged/Melee originally, so they were given secondaries that were highly derivative of existing melee sets whenever that was possible, and to the best extent possible. That doesn't mean the devs thought that was *all* blaster secondaries should do: the time they saved copying tanker secondaries gave them time to make /devices which was totally different.

AR/Dev is not as low damage as people like to make out. It has two weaknesses, poor single target damage and and no aim/build up. The former means that it has trouble with taking out bosses and the latter impacts it's ability to front load damage.

These two combined do mean that AR/Dev doesn't have the raw damage output of other Blasters BUT on teams it's AoE damage output is still very competitive compared to most other Blasters (the Main exceptions being Archery, Assault Rifle and maybe Fire especially with Build Up).

Solo AR/Dev does suffer more from the inability to directly front load damage. This is circumvented somewhat by pre-placing a trip mine before combat. Not only does this give a decent Defiance boost for your first few attacks (roughly equal to a small red) it also provides passive defense against melee attackers by damaging them and (hopefully) sending them flying. The lack of single target damage is mitigated by using Web Grenade and Ignite although the long setup times makes this impractical except against bosses and some fo the tougher LTs.

Web Grenade/Caltrops + Ignite. For some reason I don't recall anyone really harping on Ignite until I mentioned a couple years ago that Ignite has scale 5.0 intrinsic damage. Its smaller, but makes Burn look like Power Push.

People don't like it because of its long cast time, but Ignite deals a ridiculous amount of damage if you can just keep the target from running out of it. Like, Nova levels of damage.

The funny part is that as far as I can tell, Defender Ignite uses the same pet and deals the same damage. Application on a Traps/AR is left to the reader, but probably ends with AVs burned at the stake.