So those obsolete ATs

Those threads pop up from time to time. I usually don't bother with them at all unless someone says something interesting or different. You'll notice I haven't posted in that thread.

Blasters outdamage the other ranged ATs by a very wide margin. The only AT that even comes close to (and occasionally surpasses) blaster ranged damage is dominators. You will never see a defender or corruptor hitting the levels of carnage a well played blaster can dish out.

On a full team with a little bit of support or a good tank, blasters are fully capable of making melee ATs redundant or useless. I've played a scrapper on teams with several blasters, and entire spawns were dead before I even got to them in order to attack.

They solo pretty well too, provided you know what you're doing with them. Blasters require much more awareness of your environment than a lot of other ATs. IF you don't notice a boss or nasty LT in a spawn you're attacking you will have difficulty, but once you get a handle on your strengths (ridiculous damage output) and weaknesses (not much in the way of mitigation) you can do some crazy things on a blaster.

Couple examples: A blaster has soloed an ITF. And it was a Fire/Fire blaster at that. A blaster has also soloed a Giant Monster.

I don't think blasters will ever become obsolete. There is always room on a team for someone that kills things stupid fast.

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.

Damage is king, Blasters = damage.

I can't play them for crap, I like close work. Damned if damage is ever obsolete though.

Every AT, with the exception of HEAT's has a least one spec that can solo at least some lvl 50 AV's.

That said a Warshade might be able to do it if they had enough persistent Mire fuel.

At any rate, solo'ing most single AV's isn't much of an accomplishment any more. IO's have pretty much made this a realistic goal for anyone that wants to do it. Solo'ing AV's as quickly as possible and/or solo'ing multiple at the same time is still an activity that can set a pretty high standard for others to measure up against.

Makes it a terrible yardstick to measure the size of your ***** against then doesn't it?

If you are using a yardstick, you really don't have any worries

The first 20 levels are a blast

I know I should probably avoid them. I've been avoiding it most days this week with all the grading I have to do. But then I see it and read some posts, and it's like someone is kicking a puppy... and I just... can't... stay... away!

You're missing out on what the two powersets combine to do. Blasters are able to do damage from up close and from afar, and you're also missing a key part of most Blaster Secondaries, which is they compliment the damage and provide some mitigation. With help from their secondaries, my AR/EM and Arch/Devices can keep a boss permanently stunned while they drop him (or they can just drop him). My Elec secondary can drain mobs and have access to another hold.

And you say 2 attack sets like it's a bad thing. You can destroy stuff from afar with your primary, and when they come close, you can drop things quite quickly with 1-2 fast melee strikes (especially if you have a /EM, /Elec, or /Fire).

Blasters were great after the Defiance buffs and even without IOs. With them, I build all my Blasters with about 30% defense (the type depends on the powersets), and they're able to lots of fun stuff solo, and especially teamed.

Yes, only the first twenty. *sighs* You and that attitude are that "kicking the puppy" feeling I mentioned earlier. 1-50 should be a blast for any Blaster, not just for the first 20.

And heck... my Dual Pistols Blaster has been even more fun in his 20s than he was in Praetoria: and I was having a lot of fun there. Oh yes, fun is unquantifiable and bad to mention. Okay, he defeats things with even more ease than he did before, thanks to more powers and slots.

Pursuing this tangent: I've noticed the change in foe behavior, but has it propagated to NPC combat allies? In my experience, NPC combat allies still frequently spend long periods standing near foes and not attacking them, and it's not due to recharge debuffs or mez. Shock Treatment and Doc Delilah stand out particularly in my mind for this behavior: they'll use their ranged attacks, then run into melee and... stand there looking cute. It's particularly striking because it only applies when they're combat allies: Shock Treatment is quite aggressive when she is a foe.

Controller and MM pets do not have this problem. MM pets have their own problems, but being timid with their attacks is not one...

Aim+Build Up+ a couple AoE powers usually means you just killed an entire spawn at once.

You haven't had fun until you've played a Fire/Fire blaster on the razor's edge between victory and defeat, immolating groups of enemies before they get a chance to even think about shooting back.

The key to blaster survival is killing them before they kill you, and not much is better suited to that than a blaster.

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.

That is everyone's key to survival. Its also pretty clear by just about any measure there are other ATs that have a much better ability to deal out the damage needed to kill enemies while staying within their survival envelope.

Yeah, and it's a real shame that blasters don't have any way to proactively mitigate incoming damage, like stun or knockback.

If you call being objective kicking the puppy ?

I soloed praetoria on a blaster, and I would argue objectively there wasn't anything that could do that content better. My total death rate was single digit. A good portion of that was I had an idea what was needed in praetoria and the availability of insps at the hospitals.

I also soloed praetoria on a defender. If I were to say that was not nearly as enjoyable would that make me biased against defenders ?

What a great nonsequitur. Its really a shame the cubs can't get their act together and win a world series.

Heh.

Blasters are probably one of the most widely loved of ATs. People play them because they do container ships worth of damage. Yeah, they die pretty easily. They're the game's "glass cannons". There are plenty of folks, though, who adore that about them. For these players, it's a rush to play something so fragile that wipes things out so well.

Just so you know, they've gotten some overhauls in the past. They really didn't focus on the AT's fragility, per se. Data mining by the devs showed that the AT lagged others for rate of XP gain, apparently because they died a lot and so had lots of debt. (This was a source of intense debate on the forums, because some players, while acknowledging that the AT was fragile, did not die so often that they were in frequent debt. Other players reported living in a perpetual state of debt.) It seems likely, based on the data mining, that a Blaster that didn't suffer debt drag was the realm of players of above average skill. It should be noted that Blasters were still rather popular, despite that this revelation from the devs about leveling speed didn't really surprise a lot of people.

The first change the AT got (which was now a very long time ago) made Blasters deal more damage the more injured they were. (The AT was also given a HP boost at some point, and I think it was at this time.) I don't know what data mining said, but I'm of the opinion that this probably backfired more than it helped, because Blasters would actually try to get hurt just so they could deal more damage.

The second major pass on the AT gave us the one we have now. The more you attack, the more damage buffs you get, and you can use your littler attacks even when mezzed. Their ranged damage was increased at the same time. (The HP increase was retained.) Again, I don't know what data mining says, but this version seems a lot more popular.

I don't think you should ever expect the devs to change the fact that Blasters get something that feels like two attack sets. It's an intentional, defining characteristic of the AT, and there are a lot of people who like it.

Edit: It's extremely important to note - Blasters are expected by design to have teammates, with the presumption that those teammates can help keep them alive. It's very common for CoH players, especially those who frequent the forums, to strain against that particular design limitation in every AT where it applies, but it's still worth pointing out.

First, non sequitur is two words.

More importantly, however, my reply did have relevance to what I quoted. You state that blasters don't have the tools to stay within their envelope. I submit that they do; you just have to play intelligently to make use of them.

No what I said was

"Its also pretty clear by just about any measure there are other ATs that have a much better ability to deal out the damage needed to kill enemies while staying within their survival envelope."

What repeatedly happens in these discussions, is somebody says that X is not quite up to snuff, and before you can say jack robinson, "not as well" becomes "not at all".

Except it's not clear by just about any measure. For your statement to be true, there has to be a drastic difference between the survival tools of a blaster and everyone else across the board. There are many situations where a blaster has much more survivability than the scrapper, and can defeat more foes with much less danger.

Example: Turn on hover.

Do you have any examples ?

The only ones I can think of off the top of my head are certain enemy groups that like to fight at range, only do smash/lethal damage, and have no mezz, and only KB. There is also the infamous, no ranged attacks for enemies exploit in ae. I am not 100% sure of the first actually being better for the blaster Another might be the single target case where the blaster has a hold/stun or with single target bosses where the blaster has 2 holds/stuns.

Screenshot of tunnel.

Edit and just to be plain. AE once and all proved that any AT can have scenarios built that play to their strengths.

Vanguard.

Any mob where a build up AoE wipes the entire spawn of minions.