Why choose single target over AOE?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OLoL0vLOJ0

The first 20 seconds of that is why I prefer ST characters.

I'm not concerned with fast rewards, I prefer to take things down one at a time, but quickly (i.e. why I mostly play blasters). Sure, for my Energy blaster, Explosive Blast makes for a great opener, but then I let loose with Power Bolt, -Blast, and -Burst, and most things are dead before they can get up off the ground. On my Ice blaster, forget it, Frost Breath is used almost exclusively on a team.

To answer the title question, is simply comes down to what you are aiming for and how you want to play.

Yea, the more AOE the less single target damage. And while AOE is great for dropping large groups all at once, it's typically lower damage per target then a ST attack. Back with the old difficulty slider, I made a spine/dark scrapper (then king of aoe damage for scrappers). And while I could drop large groups of minions, LT or bosses gave me a lot of trouble. Especially bosses.

I agree with the OP's initial feelings, that choosing single target often seems to leave you at a disadvantage.

Energy Melee on Tanks gives up AoE for single target, and yet its ST damage isn't that impressive, even when you take the stuns into account. My dark/EM tank was fun to play, but I didn't really feel like I had the burst damage ST wallop i'd signed up for.

Similarly, my MA/SR stalker, with NO AoE at all, didn't feel that good at ST. Another competent character, but lacking somehow.

And I've given up taking snipes altogether pretty much on my Blasters and Defenders.

Its seems to me that there are opportunities in the game for a bit more single target punch than we get. I'm talking about the ability to maybe one shot a red-con leiutenant on a Blaster using snipe or a Stalker using Assassin's Strike, or two shot on a EM Tanker using Total Focus and Energy Transfer.

Currently we don't have that. Is it the danger of taking all the risk out of solo missions that's holding us back?

It is never a choice between the two for me . i always have a nice mix of the two . and my elec mele /shield brute while his single target is weaker than other sets still has no problems with bosses an i can handle av's as well
just like my km/sr scrapper can handle large mobs . most peeps who concentrate mainly on single target that i know do it for pvp , where a Aoe heavy toon = "stop attackin me im just inzone to farm "

I love my aoe characters, my single target ones not so much (except for my ice/cold def, but I don't use my 3 single target attacks much)

I look back at some of the sets I stopped playing and they are ones like MA, Energy, Dark melee, one of the reasons why I haven't played KM yet.

I think the best course for me to do next time is pair these sets up with shield or even fire so I can grab some extra aoe

I guess I'll chime in on this.

I agree with the OP, AoE has always seemed a lot more epic for me than ST. Sure, both are useful, but other than for pure concept, it's pretty safe to admit that AoE is a lot more useful overall.

Take two people, one pure AoE and one pure ST. Not only does the AoE person contribute much more overall damage in a team setting, don't forget that he also does damage to the hard targets too. It may not be that much, but it's noticeable, and it adds up. Meanwhile, the ST damage person is doing ZERO damage to everything other than the one target he's attacking.

In my personal experience, I've always felt that I added A LOT more to a team if I was playing something with a lot of AoE damage. Honestly I don't know how anybody could even argue with that. If I could choose a guy that would either 1.) kill the entire spawn minus the boss, while doing some damage to the boss as well, or 2.) kill just the one boss, while doing NOTHING to the rest of the spawn, I would go with #1 in like 99% of cases. It's just more useful.

A team with no serious ST damage can still easily clean up the 1 or 2 bosses left over after their AoE carnage. But a team with no AoE damage will be severely handicapped, because they'll have to kill everything one by one, increasing the time it takes to do the mission by several times.

Going back to my personal experience, I have one of the top ST performers in the game in a DM/SR scrapper. I hated leveling him up. I felt so useless on teams when I'd go in there and take out a couple Lt's or one boss....while someone else on the team killed the ENTIRE rest of the spawn in the same amount of time. I definitely did not feel like a super hero.

You guys are saying it yourselves. "I just don't feel as epic," "I feel much more effective on a team". Are you more effective with more AoEs? Sure, in terms of raw, total DPS across all foes, AoEs in this game are basically always more effective.

This gets back to the point I made in my very first post. Why are you so worried about being that much more effective? If it makes you feel super in some inner RP kind of way, then I have no argument with it. If you're really concerned about the performance benefit, I think you're playing the wrong game. An experienced player can steamroll most of the content in this game with three fingers and a straw to drive the controls. Unless it's truly an internalized preference about what feels fun, I can't wrap my head around worrying about it. Play what you want, make it the best it can be and enjoy yourself. If you need AoEs to enjoy yourself, go to town building for them, but if you don't, don't sweat it.

I'll tell you what, though. If you're in love with AoEs, I wouldn't run around trumpeting it. The reason you guys feel this way about single-target damage is that AoEs are massively imbalanced here. I am pretty certain that the only way this situation will change, assuming it ever does, will not be to make single-target damage better.