Blasters vs Corruptors vs Defenders

i'm seeing a lot of arguments in this thread ignoring the blaster secondary. If all things were equal, and your only source of damage for a blaster were its primary, then yeah, corruptors (particularly rad or kin) can out damage and out survive a blaster.

But blasters get a secondary damage set, which allows them, if you build them right, to put out some absolutely insane damage... unfortunately not quite as much as a /kin... but there it is.

I do agree however, that Blasters, as a class, are a bit underpowered... They do about the same single target and area damage a strong scrapper/brute can manage, yet have none of the survivability. they need either a massive damage boost or a massive survivability boost. or a little of both.

Insane damage compared to what? A blaster doesn't do "insanely" more damage than a scrapper, and scrappers (and stalkers) get armor secondaries.

Comparing blasters to corruptors 1:1 is kind of a pointless thing to do, especially in the context of the new trials.

However much damage a blaster does compared to a corruptor, it certainly isn't enough to keep up with how much larger team sizes favor ruptors' debuffs. Maybe on 8 man teams they're relatively even, but on the BAF? Tar patch is "worth" a lot more damage when it's increasing 23 people's damage than it is when it's increasing 7. Blasters benefit from the larger team too, because there are more debuffs for them to take advantage of, but not as much as the corruptor benefits.

This arguably would be okay if blasters had a set devoted to survivability (scrappers are in the same boat, scaling-wise), but they don't. Their secondaries consist of a few melee attacks (that new content is making increasingly difficult to use effectively) and some anemic debuffs and controls. Blasters are effectively using their primary and secondary to do what other damage dealers do with their primary alone.

Blasters always seemed more like Scrappers & Brutes to me: focused on the damage that they alone bring to the team. All three can bring a lot of damage, which is nice, but they rarely bring anything more than that. For normal teaming (e.g. everything but AV/GM), damage can be enough.

Corruptors and Defenders can bring additional survivability and/or damage for the entire team, which is a big advantage. Both really shine in difficult teaming (e.g. AV/GM). You won't notice their contributions quite so much when you're steamrolling mobs. You'll also notice them when enemies activate godmode powers.

I would say that Corruptors have an advantage overall. They can throw damage when it's most useful (normal teaming) and force multiply whenever something more is called for. That's just a great combination.

I think the problem with blaster is, that the devs forgot to really adjust them to the game changes they made. Back when the game came out it was like range = defense because most mobs did not have ranged attacks. It was City of Blasters for a reason. They said Scrappers get shields in their secondary because they need to be in melee range where they get attacked. But now that all mobs have nasty range and mezz attacks I really think that blasters vs scrappers are unbalanced.

I've always wanted to play a blaster, throwing energy or fire blasts is as iconic for heroes as smashing stuffs face in with super strength.

Problem is the secondary has always felt out of place, like it doesn't really add anything to the blaster and leave's him weak and defenseless.

Corruptors get the same awesome blastiness albeit slightly weaker but with an awesome and useful secondary to go with. Feel that blaster secondary sets should be completely overhauled and given new direction.