Blasters surpurflous?

Sounds like a personal problem

Good use of the word "can".

During which time, they are doing no damage.

So, what you are saying is that an AT that only does damage ~50% of the time, with a lower base damage, gets more benefit from Musculature, then an AT with a higher base damage that does damage 85% of the time? Interesting.

A blaster who has 95% Damage enhancement and either Build Up or Aim active (my blaster's MO) will then average 176.25% damage bonus over the base (276.25% including the base). Musculature radial paragon brings it to a total of 199.89% Damage bonus over the base (299.89% including the base). That's only an increase of 23.64% Damage bonus, or 13.41% of 176.25% - significantly less impressive for the final build than what a Controller, who lacks access to Build up, Aim, and typically doesn't slot most of their attacks for damage unless necessary. It's not that Controllers get more, it's that what they do get makes a larger difference on their end performance.

Originally Posted by Shubbie Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.

With only aim, a Defender has 50% Damage bonus, a Corr gets 42.5%, and a Blaster 62.5%. Whereas a blaster could split the difference between BU and Aim by alternating for every spawn, a Defender/Corr could only do so every other spawn - meaning their 95% only gains 25% or 21.25%.

Defender ends up with +120% (approx)
Corr ends up with +116.25% (approx)
Blaster has +176.25% (approx)

If the Defender/Corr gets PBU or Soul Drain from their ancillary/patron pools, the equation becomes a little less unbalanced, but both powers have a 4 minute recharge and as such are harder for me to plug into the equation quickly.

But, working with aim alone, Musc Radial Paragon results in:
Defender = +143.64% Damage (19.7% Increase)
Corr = +139.89% Damage (20.38% Increase)
A Blaster Cycling both Aim and BU gets:
Blaster = +199.89% Damage (13.41% Increase)

Originally Posted by Shubbie Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.

For the bold part - which has 0% increase from the Corr or Defs Musculature, which is what we were talking about.

As far as spending time keeping yourself alive - that's generally done by blasting the snot out of everything you see, so that's still doing damage.

Aim + BU as often as possible? With 3 lvl 50 Rech IOS (reasonable to assume) that's ~45s recharge. 1.17s cast time each, so let's say 2.5s for both, since I can't recall the formula for Arcanatime. That gives (2.5/45)*100 = ~6%. I'll concede I was wrong about ~100% of the time, it's more like ~95% of the time.

I suppose a case can be made for Controller (and Dominator) pets. Whether that pulls them ahead wrt Musculatures boost I'm not too fussed about attempting to calculate - I'd imagine it may for Dominators but likely not for Controllers.

That appears to assume 50% uptime for Aim and/or BU - wouldn't 20% uptime be more appropriate? ~45s recharge with 3 lvl 50 Rech IOs, 1.17s activation time each and 10s duration.

On most of the blasters I play Aim, and Build Up are available every 25 seconds or less. I like to lead with them.

The point is that the percentage of time you are doing damage is mostly irrelevant.

If you have someone that is doing 150 dps but doing it as a single attack of 450 once every 3 seconds, then spends 2 seconds standing there, its no different then someone who attacks every second for 150.

And in terms of +damage blasters fair very badly here as well. They have a 500% percent damage cap, they can achieve 410/500 of that without musculature all by themselves (100% base damage+100% enhancements+50% defiance+160%)

Before musculature they can absorb an additional 90% base damage after its 60%. Somehow it just seems wrong that the "DAMAGE" at gets so little from outside damage buffs.

That may be so, but it's hardly standard slotting.

Riiiight, so your point is that 8 players with Musculature beats 1 player with Musculature? Genius!

Agreed. However, if you have someone doing an attack of 200 damage every 2 seconds vs someone doing an attack of 20 damage every second, that's a gap no amount of damage boosts is going to close.

Aye, a damage cap increase would be welcomed - 700% seems fair. That is, a 200% increase, not a 700% increase

No.

My point is this: Imagine two teams, one of 7 players without Musculature, and one with 7 players who all have Musculature. Now consider adding a defender or blaster without musculature to the first team, or a defender or blaster with musculature to the second.

The argument would be that, while the direct gain of musculature to the blaster is higher, the net effect on the defender may be higher, such that even though the blaster's buffed more by musculature, the second team will gain more total damage if they pick the defender.

Which is quite possibly true, but I don't really think it makes blasters superfluous; very few people are picking teams for maximal synergy and efficiency, mostly we pick teams for "cool costume" or "I know this guy" or "there was someone else in the zone? cool!"

Which is all fine and dandy, but has no bearing on whether Musculature boosts the damage done by a Blaster or Defender more. Sure, the gain from Musculature for other characters while boosted is likely greater, but that isn't (or rather, wasn't) what is/was being discussed. I think. This thread is too much of a mess for me to be sure

I wouldn't say no to a damage cap increase, but I will point out it will only help the blasters least in need of help: blasters on teams with ginormous amounts of buffing. It won't help solo blasters or blasters on most of the sorts of teams where they are likely to die.

Could blasters as a set be given an increase to their cap without increasing any other ATs damage cap. That might help some blasters solo, and would certainly make blasters on a team with buffers even more welcome.

"Sure," says the Kin Def, "I can buff the other Defender to the damage cap and the scrapper, but if I can get that blaster over there to join the team, I can even get him to HIS damage cap, and then we can really light stuff up!!"

Just an idea.

I think the most important question is which character's total damage contribution is boosted more by the addition of Musculature to the game. The claim is that musculature made blasters irrelevant, the counterclaim is that it boosts them more than it boosts defenders. But the key thing about defenders and the like is that their biggest contribution is not what they do directly, it's their effect on everyone else. And if that effect is magnified more because other people have musculature, then yes, it does contribute to a conclusion that blasters aren't as desireable on a team as they were before musculature existed.

... Except no one cares, because CoH has never really been about team optimization, so far as I can tell.

In spite of forum conjectures to the contrary, there's no evidence blasters have trouble finding teams. But since no solo blaster can really breach the current damage cap with any practicality, an increase in the cap doesn't help solo blasters. In fact this was my original complaint when the blaster damage cap was increased: it was increased at the same time the scrapper damage *modifier* was increased to its current value and both changes were described by the devs (i.e. Statesman) as an "increase of damage." The scrapper mod increase was an increase of damage. The blaster damage cap increase was eliminating the BU+AIM capitation issue which was going to go away anyway when ED went in.

I would sooner take a blaster mod increase to 1.25 than a strength cap increase to 7.0.

I think your final line is probably a fine idea, too, but I was trying to address the complaint of blasters being superfluous, not solo-able.

If blasters did, in theory, need a change to contribute more to a team, (and I'm not convinced they do) I think upping their cap might be a better answer than upping their mod number. But I won't even pretend to know the numbers as well as you do, Arcana, so I might be wrong.

I'm not sure of the whole damage formula, and frankly I don't even care to take the time to look it up, but would upping the mod numbers make blasters do more total damage when at the cap? If so, then upping the mod numbers not only allows them to solo better, but also contribute more in a team setting. Or so I think.

Increasing the damage cap of blasters would have more of a psychological impact than a numerical one, given the scenarios discussed in this thread. In situations where blasters are being out damage-contributed by force multipliers, the difference is large and not small. An increase in damage cap from 5.0 to 7.0 is basically an increase in total damage of 40%. Which is a lot if you can buff yourself that high, but its worthless until you do, and when you do you still have to compete with force multipliers delivering several times the damage you do.

Although, personally speaking I don't buy into the optimized force multiplier numbers as being representative, simply because I don't ever actually see those situations in a sustained fashion. And I play both sides of the force-multiplier fence. Also, I really honestly haven't seen this prejudice against blasters as damage dealers. I have never, in seven years, heard of someone advertising for a damage dealer, and by that they meant kinetics defender. I've seen people advertise for strange stuff, but that would be a first for me. The only times I've ever seen blaster-prejudice has been in situations where people think they are too squishy, and no amount of damage cap increase would make them less squishy.

As do your problems with blasters and pretty much every other complaint you have.

*shrug*