Blasters surpurflous?

That's actually not true. It situationally depends, and usually isn't that bad. Take my energy blaster for example. Her energy powers start off Power Bolt and then Power Blast. When mezzed I can use both. Ignoring the ridiculous amount of recharge I have in the build now, if you shoot both as often as possible, then ignoring collisions for simplicity you will be taking up 1 second in 5 for power bolt and 1.67 seconds out of every 9.67 for power blast. Ignoring ArcanaTime/recharge fun, that is approximately 37% of your time spent just shooting those two powers. With one SO of recharge which is likely at higher levels, that number increases to 47%. Those are close to the worst case scenarios in terms of opportunity cost: even if I could shoot all my attacks instead of just two, if I was slotted 1-recharge I couldn't do any better than about twice the damage. So mezzing cuts my offense roughly in half in that case.

And its not even that bad. Bolt and Blast have 80 feet of range. But Burst has only 40 feet of range: it won't always be usable against a ranged mezzer even if it was available. Ditto Torrent. Only explosive blast has the same range, and honestly the only attack that would be highly advantageous to be available while mezzed besides the first two would be power push (because its a guaranteed soft mez and could actually push the mezzer out of range it *its* mez). Of course, I say attack because the power blasters would most want available while mezzed in general is likely to be Aim.

Of course, energy blast is actually special in some ways in this context, making it not fully representative of all blaster primaries (among other things, its DPA is very flat). But the principles are the same: allowing the first two attacks is substantially useful and not just a tiny fraction of a blaster's total capability. In terms of killing a single target the first two powers contain a significant percentage of the total offense of the blaster. The other powers tend to have more situational properties: they have shorter range, they are AoEs with long recharge, they are snipes. I see the same thing with Archery, with AR, with Electric Blast. Time was, long ago, blasters used to skip one of those two attacks as being unnecessary. Some because they were crap (power bolt, flares) and some just because other powers were simply better. These days, however, you'd be crazy to not take them both, because it provides a substantial advantage while mezzed, and the lesser powers were rebalanced to not be complete crap anymore.

That's a rather circular definition of "correct". I get that they defined a metric to do their datamining and then determined that according to this metric (which they defined) that Blasters were "underperforming". I get that. What bothers me is why they didn't then ask the question, "Okay... but who cares?"

I'm not saying popularity is the only thing you should look at. Not all ATs can or should be at the same level of popularity. Blasting will probably always be more popular than Tanking, for example. Doesn't mean there is anything wrong with Tankers. But if you look at something that SHOULD be popular and then find out that is IS popular... why pull the fire alarm? The place does not appear to be on fire. It's like instead we're doing some math on a chalkboard that suggests the place SHOULD be on fire. And yet...

I have no idea what you are talking about. The devs never balanced any archetype specifically based on popularity, nor did I or anyone else I can think of claim they did.

Look, from this post I can see you aren't just lashing out like that other poster so when I say you need to put a little thought to what I am about to say take it to heart it isn't meant to be a belittling statement.

I have no doubt that there are people who have taken blasters to level 50 without dieing, I have no doubt your claims are accurate. I know this from my own experience. I have soloed or dual boxed task forces at speed running a blaster. Matter of fact I will usually say the leading cause of death for blasters are team mates. When I say that things start to break bad for a blaster in the 20s and get really bad after 30, its from my personal experience of what has to be done to achieve performance. I am not saying blasters can't perform, I do say it takes more effort to reach a given level.

Now your post 1 prior to the one I am now replying to doesn't make the case you think it does. The title of the thread is hyperbolic but it does hit the concept of are blasters pulling their weight as a team choice. Your statement that a blaster should wait 4 seconds before engaging on the team fight is so piercing and indictment of the idea that they are contributing I can't think of anything better. Against non EB or AV your fights are going to be over in 15 seconds or less, if its a good team 10 seconds or less. If a blaster waits 4 seconds they have done nothing for 40% of the combat.

Why do I care ? I like blasters and I would like to feel better about bringing them to teams. Its a little bit difficult for me to do so when I am well aware I could be helping the team more by bringing just about anything else.

Actually, I think he is asking a different question. I think he is asking, why did the devs bother trying to help blasters in I11 if they were already a popular AT? Who cares if they were underperforming by that metric they made up (the rewards gained/time of the average player metric), if the AT was popular anyway? Does that metric even matter, since it did not seem to have an effect on the number of people attracted to the AT?

That seems to be the gist of his question, but I may be misinterpreting.

There is very minimal value to range in this game especially in comparison to the real world. In the real world having a range advantage implies the ability to kill in near complete safety, here that is not the case. What range does buy is the ability to engage in combat faster and depending on circumstances a period where the enemies may be doing reduced levels of damage.

The figure of merit for combat units is usually expressed as survivability*lethality in this games case you would need extra terms in lethality to account for force multiplication based on team size. For the claim that blasters have the maximum theoretical performance to be true, they would need to gain enough survivability from delivering damage from range to offset their numeric lack of survivability and do so without incurring a time penalty for setup. That doesn't seem possible except perhaps in unusual circumstances.



From the strict point of view of how many powers you have available its exact. You lose a greater percentage of your potential choices when mezzed as you level up.


In the general case considering potential utility its even worse. For every person that derives their damage from a tier 1/2 power in a single target situation there are many situations that involve multiple targets attacking the blaster. In the cases where you have more than one attacker the loss of AoE powers results in a greater loss of damage, and or the associated mitigation. In your case of the energy/energy blaster you have lost the mitigation from explosive blast and energy torrent also their ability to damage multiple targets. The above isn't even considering that you don't have aim or build up which push your accrued single target damage way up after the first attack.

I guess my post was poorly worded. Yes, I am not asking why they DID balance by popularity. They didn't. They created a performance metric (in this case debt and leveling speed, apparently) and balanced around that. But why? Why NOT look first at popularity to decide if there is even a problem with the AT that people seem to care about. If you're looking at one of the most popular ATs out there... what problem can there be?

Is balancing ATs by some arbitrary performance metric that is defined by the devs and not the players somehow more valid? Is it an end in itself or a means to an end. If it's a means to an end... well, to what end?

You could just RP more damage.

Oh and nerf herding is so 2009.

This does not match actual gameplay. There's a reason those short range blasts were favored more by blappers than ranged blasters, especially when their range was originally 20 feet rather than their current 40 feet. Blappers engage at close range and thus don't care as much, but blasters that engage at range are generally doing so from ranges higher than 40 feet. Even when they do engage at ranges closer than 40 feet ranged-preferred mezzers will often retreat to about 50 feet - 60 feet, out of range of those attacks.

That's one of the reasons I respeced out of Power Burst in I19. When I tried to switch from a blapper playstyle to a more ranged attacker for a while in preparation for that respec (a while = several months) I discovered that I simply wasn't using the power anymore: it was out of range as often as not. In some sets, that equivalent power at least has a sizable DPA advantage for situational usage, but power burst doesn't. Without that advantage, and with the significant range penalty, it tended to sit in my tray unused. I was very often using *explosive blast* as a single target attack over power burst.


That also doesn't seem to match actual gameplay. In actual gameplay, when you're mezzed you aren't thinking about AoE potential generally, but about either defeating the mezzer, or alternatively defeating the highest threat to you at the time you're mezzed. You're often in a situation with a ranged-preferred mezzer that stands off while other members of the spawn charge you while you're mezzed. Being able to deal with the mezzer, or if it happens the higher threat targets even while mezzed represents far more than 15% of the total number of high priority options a blaster will want to have in that situation.

If you're thinking that while mezzed a blaster can't simply ignore the mez and continue doing what they were doing before, then technically speaking their options can be greatly reduced while mezzed. But if you're thinking that the blaster's primary objective is to remove the highest threat to themselves while they are mezzed, because its often while mezzed that blasters are defeated, their options never drop that low if they have two primary and one secondary attack available. That's just not a proper evaluation of the situation as a blaster, except a blaster that explicitly wants to die.

To take it to an extreme, if the only power a blaster could use while mezzed was a travel power that would just be one power. You could make the same numerical argument that it is just one option out of many. But in terms of dealing with mez, that would never be a 15% solution: that would be a 95% solution. If you can run away from mez and break off combat, that solves almost *all* immediate problems blasters have with mez. Its not as good as standing and fighting while ignoring mez like things with mez protection can do, but it virtually eliminates the chances of being inevitably defeated by mez (you could voluntarily be defeated if you choose not to run away and break off the fight temporarily).

Sorry, my 'Freedumb' filter went off. But I suppose RP is pretty OP. Could use a nerf, too, seeing as how the RP community has made a lot more happen to this game than 'Freedumbs' constant Dev bashing during the Praetorian Invasion could have possibly hoped to have.

If you don't think Fire Blast and Archery are sole reasons why certain AT number tweaks aren't going through, you clearly aren't as 'hardcore' as you hoped to be. Especially if some 'RPer' knows how overpowered the two sets are in comparison to the other Blaster sets.

And, yes. I do have an IO'd Archery and an IO'd Fire Blast. If your AT is based around DAMAGE AND MORE DAMAGE, then you should take the DAMAGE AND MORE DAMAGE sets. Anything less is... RPing!


PS: Thanks for reminding me, by the way. That link in the signature is outdated. Just like your RP bashing!

The simple answer is that everyone already kills almost as fast as can be balanced for, so blasters have limited headroom to buff damage.

To oversimplify greatly, the difference between two-shotting and one-shotting is that when you one-shot and you get to shoot first, you can reduce the amount of attacks you have to deal with to zero. One-shotting is a form of infinite damage mitigation. But there's no such thing as one and a half shotting. Its two shotting or one shotting. Anything that isn't one-shotting is two-shotting or higher.

That's a huge oversimplification to illustrate the more complex and subtle problem: blasters kill pretty fast, and they take a certain amount of damage and other foe effects during that window of time. But that time isn't evenly and continuously reducible. When you have combat taking twenty shots to defeat a foe, going down to 19 or up to 21 is pretty fine control over offense. But when you're averaging 3 shots, going up to 4 or down to 2 are enormous jumps in effectiveness. It doesn't take very much of a push to turn blasters from being pinatas to being alpha strike obliterators that literally take no return fire.

Case in point: way way back when I was leveling my main, back when dinosaurs walked the Earth, I fell into the content gap at 27. How did I crawl out of it? I hunted greens and blues in Talos. Why? Because green and blue minions could be defeated by the combo of Torrent + Explosive Blast, which meant I had a fairly reliable two-shot kill on them. *And* there were lots of big spawns of them in Talos, so I could create regular hunting loops through Talos (I used to orbit from the Natural Store west between the buildings and loop back up to about the Mutant Store). Even though I was attacking lots of Ink Men (and the occasional LT) who had lots of debuff and mez, they rarely got to use any of it on me. Bang Bang, I shot them down, Bang Bang, they hit the ground, and it was off to another spawn.

And its not like Energy Blast is a particularly high damage or AoE-focused blaster primary. But how much buff would it have taken for me to graduate up to doing the same thing to whites and yellows? Not much: maybe 20-30% increase in damage.

The original rate of combat, a feature many consider one of this game's more casual-friendly, superheroish, and MMO genre-breaking features when it was launched, also places blasters in a very tight corner between having so much damage they basically have unlimited damage mitigation through kill speed, and having so little protection that any damage they do take is potentially mortal. Where they are is actually not all that bad given the two very hot rails they are close to, its just that where they are isn't especially great either.

I think your view of actual gameplay may be a little narrow and characterizing as actual gameplay would be painting with an overbroad brush.

A few examples will clarify this

An arch/ment blaster should make provide a good test case, as they can be made to blap well, and range well and also demonstrate why for most blasters defiance is actually very weak.

For the power selections the ranger takes in no particular order

Aimed shot
snap shot
Subdual
TK thrust
Aim
Concentration
Psychic scream
Fistful of arrows
Stunning shot
Rain of arrows
+Whatever they need for travel (hover if applicable) and whatever they need to get ranged defense

The blapper takes

Aimed shot
Snap shot
Subdual
Tk Thrust
Aim
Concentration
Psychic Shockwave
Drain Psyche
Rain of arrows
Explosive arrow
whatever they need for travel, and whatever is required to get melee or smash/lethal defense.


The ranger when attacking from range is going to use a sequence something like this
Aim
concentration
Rain of arrows
Psychic Shockwave (psychic shockwave goes here for timing considerations fistful would prematurely alert the spawn)
Fistful of arrows
(aimed shot -> snap shot)* on whatever is still standing.

The only reason range is needed here is so that the cones can cover the spawns. It offers no great benefit in and of itself. More range than is needed to keep this character out of melee and in the area where it actually has defense is wasted. If Fistfull of Arrows and Psychic Scream were powers called arrow bomb and psychic bomb, targeted aoes with a 15 or 20 foot radius there would be no need to have more than 20 foot range on any of the powers.

What you get from range is the ability to stealth the spawn which can be compensated for by having more and better stealth and the ability to engage more dispersed spawns, the baf is an example.


The blapper shows very well how the range isnt really needed and it also provides a nice setup for the counter example on mez effects.

The blapper stealths to the center of the same spawn
Seeing as its in the center of the spawn it then hits
Aim
Concentration
Rain of arrows on his own head
Drain Psyche
Psychic Shockwave
Explosive arrow on the closest target standing
(Aimed shot -> snap shot->(Tk Thrust if things are close and threatening))

Range is completely counterproductive here except for the case where you are shooting at runners, and that is only a problem for blasters because they don't have the luxury of ignoring them


Now lets look at the Mezz case, at this point I think we are talking past each other, so I will restate what my position was first even though I am certain you are aware of it just to place things in context then I will present what I am reading your position as and you can correct any misperception of it I may have.


As a blaster levels up defiance becomes proportionately less useful. It initially convers all the powers they can pick and as they gain levels it doesn't cover an ever larger proportion of their available powers. The lack of utility is multiplied by the fact that as they level up they face more and more attackers that can apply status effects to them.

Now if I understand the case you are arguing, this is not the case because the blaster still has a solid single target attack chain and can concentrate on the target that mezzed them until its eliminated.

Well lets take our blapper up there and see how this works in actual game play. He is on a team and for whatever reason he has aggroed a spawn without setting up for it. He may have been following a crazy tank, the scrapper may have dived in before he was in place and triggered a bunch of aoes that broke his stealth whatever.

1. The spawn becomes alert to the blaster
2. an opponent lands a mezzing attack on him
---- At this point he has only single attacks assuming no breakfrees in the insp tray he has no insps
3. He now has only aimed shot, snap shot, subdual to deal with the spawn until the mezz runs its course, in the case of malta, arachnos or carnies this can be a very long time.

His big forms of mitigation are all gone. If he is S/L defense that means likely 1/2 the defense or more is gone, if he is melee a good third of it is gone. Explosive arrow, drain psyche, and psychic shockwave his active mitigation are taken out and he is left with a tiny fraction of his potential damage output.

This is considerably worse than the simple counting method, and illustrates why I went with loss of degrees of freedom as the criteria. Endless numbers of cases can be created, but in general if I am facing just a mezzer and minion defiance can handle it, but when you get into larger spawns with multiple mezzers and more abilities at their disposal it becomes much worse.

The Carnie master illusionist is a good counter example of how the lack of coverage of defiance harms the blaster. If you start in on a master illusionist at full health and they mezz you, you are going to be held for a very long time and before you can say jack robinson she will have burried you in an army of pets, one of which actually heals the other pets, and another pet that summons even MOAR PETS. While you are trying single target her to death she will be going intangible while still attacking you. This isn't a cot dropping -to hit and a sleep or a short hold on you and it really provides a great example how defiance is very good at low levels but is not nearly as useful at high levels.

I have a feeling my experience with blasters has little chance of being inferior to yours. I've played and studied blasters at least twice as much as, say, Scrappers. They are, in fact, they only archetype that I've ever actually written guides about, back when I used to write guides.


And with all my powers rather than just three, without inspirations I would be just as dead. You need to find an example where three powers is ineffective but having them all would make a radical difference. Actually, to make your argument you'd have to find a lot of such examples: enough to prove the percentage point.

Really trying not to drop this to the level of well "I did this that and the other thing", that is why I provided examples that stand on their own. Range from my experience comes most in to play for blaster because their attacks have a crazy assortment of ranges and its needed so you can freely overlay the attacks.



Yes defiance really works best when you don't need it

Which is not necessarily bad. I very much like that a lot of the blaster inherent just works. I am not sure how well the shoot while mezzed thing saves blaster lives, but I do know I think it adds a level of fun to the AT (and I am glad the +damage mechanic just functions from attacking). I frequently kill a guy, sometimes even two while mezzed thanks to it. Will it save my life while soloing when facing a very dangerous opponent? No. But it will allow me to still play while teamed and I get hit by a mez, but most of the really dangerous stuff is hitting a tanker, or I am buffed so that I can survive but we do not have mez protection, or the enemies are debuffed to not be very dangerous. The ability to do something, anything, is actually a fun mechanic.

It is even sometimes fun while solo, even if it does not turn very many tides. It is nice that even when mezzed I can look at what I am facing and choose to save a breakfree, because, as you say, I don't really need to be operating at full against a more limited problem (of course, that brings into play the point that I can use that BF later, when the situation is really dangerous; inspiration management is more important at standard difficulty levels, where inspirations do not rain from the heavens).

I'm not sure I follow your loose associations here. Care to clarify what I have to do with dev bashing and whatever Praetorian Invasion you are referring to. I'm not sure I was even subscribed then.

I have very limited experience with Archery (Achery/MM lvl 34 I think), so I cannot comment much on that powerset. I do know, that when playing my Arch/MM Blaster, the last thing I felt was overpowered.

I do have a 50 fire/fire blaster that I've had for many years now. Of course, fire blast is going to be nutzo in damage since there is really no mitigation in the set. I also have energy/energy, Rad/MM and electric/electric blasters which are far more survivable that the fire blaster but their damage output is not the same.

I would love for you to go into more depth of the overpoweredness of both Fire and Archery rather than just throw out some nerf herding.

When I IOed my Energy/Energy Blaster I went with more damage. Incarnate abilities; more damage (reactive, musculature). When I IOed my Fire Blaster, I went for more survivability. Incarnate abilities were a mix; reactive and clarion. I don't know if I build differently than most but I typically try to plug any weaknesses rather than pile on strength after strength. Well, there is always an exception to that rule. My Fire/SD/Fire Scrapper is built for straight damage and more damage. He's a bit squishy but them's the breaks.

I didn't bash your RP brother. Your skin might be a bit thin. What I did do is poke a little fun at you like others do with pvp, stalkers, etc.

If you really feel like Fire Blast and Archery are overpowered then you should provide some data to support your claims. But I suppose just spouting off at the mouth is easier.

PS: I think RP is a great way for people to use their imagination. The SG I belong to started off with a lot of RP. However, around I9-I10 RP lost it's way and was seemingly phased out of the SG as more members moved towards Gear/Loot and others quit the game.

EDIT: gud spelyr

Taste is an individual attribute. I really don't enjoy being effectively paralyzed and having nothing better to do than just lean back and sip a drink while I watch a character go to its reward.

Its especially painful when I know if I weren't mezzed I could win through. The carnie boss example above is the perfect example of this. Mezz is that things I win button.

That's better. Although you did find a few moments to throw in some remarks that could have been done with out? You have to keep in mind, your server is particularly infamous for RP bashing, and general bashing of anything ever. Freedom comments are generally taken as an attempt to troll, and I generally respond to them as such. Never the less...

When I find the time to do the numbers for you, AKA sometime later today unless I stop caring, I'll dump them in the thread. I will, however, note one thing you said that I simply cannot believe you said.

"I do have a 50 fire/fire blaster that I've had for many years now. Of course, fire blast is going to be nutzo in damage since there is really no mitigation in the set. I also have energy/energy, Rad/MM and electric/electric blasters which are far more survivable that the fire blaster but their damage output is not the same."

The greatest mitigation in this game is damage. Fact since day one. Kill it before it kills you will always be the best mitigation imaginable.

Fire does this with not even a drop of competition in the Blaster primaries. With that aside, numbers later. But you could do it yourself if I forget to? But I'll try not to.

Having been killed by MIs while playing scrappers, I can assure you that MIs are not solely reliant on their mezzing to win (although I have been killed on scrappers due to getting mezzed, since they can stack so much, I have also been killed by MIs even without getting mezzed). This is also true on my blaster with Clarion. Even with Diamagnetic stacking some modest to hit debuff, I do not think I'd face an MI without an inspire or two. That being said, I doubt I have actually tried to take one on without inspires (and considering I run at x5 or 6, I normally play in less than ideal circumstances to try running into spawns without an inspire or 3 running).

I have taken them on with my arch/ment using just break frees. You need many of the control tools to do it. Stunning shot, the aoe kb from explosive arrow, the aoe stun from psychic shockwave, and the heals from hoarfrost and hibernate. Really wasn't considering incarnate powers in this, but that should tilt the balance even more in the favor of avoiding mezz.

Yes, yes. Dealing enough damage to defeat your opponent is the best mitigation. As long as you can do this before the opponent(s) kill you. That's the crux of the matter here. I can provide sheet loads of damage on my Fire/Fire Blaster but I find the trade off (dying often) to not be worth more damage. Instead, I decided that additional defense provided a more suitable replacement and allowed me to enjoy the blaster more.

If we are assuming level 50-51 mobs with no bosses, then...ya, the fire/fire blaster doesn't need additional mitigation cause everything is dead. But if I'm staring at level 53-54 level mobs, with bosses, then I might want some help with not dying after my first volley of AoEs.

Now, let's jump to a solo fire/fire blaster that is fighting an EB. It's going to be rough for that blaster to fight that EB (well, the level makes a difference) but I've fought many EBs on mine and succeeded. Those same EBs were much easier on my EN/EN & Rad/MM Blaster.

It's on you to provide the proof since you are the one calling for the nerfs here.