Blasters surpurflous?

I still think this guy just doesnt know how to play a blaster.

If blasters had attacks as strong as the ones being used in this thread they wouldn't have any problems

Arcanaville's earned a degree of respect with me due to being, well, well-thought out and basically correct very frequently. Much of this is likely due to her apparently saving her arguments until she has enough to backup them--in other words, not playing her cards until she's gathered a full hand of aces.

She isn't infallible, of course. No one is infallible. But she's earned respect from me just from reading the thought she put into her posts. (Myself I don't exactly do that, but I actually like being correctly pointed out as wrong, because I always learn something from it. It's for this reason that I sometimes make arguments I'm not 100% certain of, just to see how they hold up under others' scrutiny.)

And I tend to see a lot of complaints in the forums that don't particularly seem to bear out in-game. Anecdotal evidence like "I still see plenty of blasters in-game" (my personal experience) isn't worth nearly as much as statistical evidence, but the fact remains that Blasters're still popular enough by all statistical evidence released by the devs. Continuing to argue with that is just plain ridiculous, because you have no real basis to refute the devs' statistics other than anecdotal experience which is... worth far less than statistics.

All this "blasters are numerically inferior" silliness has little bearing on the reality of what people choose to play. And speaking frankly? All those arguments about a buffer/debuffer always being a better choice? Those 'inferior numbers'? Do you know what I numerically would prefer most of all to have on a team with sufficient support to keep everyone alive and a fair amount of offensive buffs/debuffs? Not yet another buffer/debuffer. No, I'd want a Blaster or two to leverage those offensive buffs most efficiently.

There're two sides to force multiplication. The multiplication and the force. The buffing/debuffing ATs bring a ton of multiplication to the table, but blasters bring a lot of force to the table, that none of the debuff/buff archetypes can really match (even the most uber damaging debuffers/buffers will be outdone by the most uber damaging blasters benefiting from the same debuffs and buffs). With the alternatives being melee oriented characters who basically waste powers on survival that isn't necessary in such a team setup and have to waste time closing in, etc... Yeah.

Blasters really only lose out to the supposedly 'outperforming' melee ATs in terms of self-sufficiency. That self-sufficiency isn't worthless (it brings some things even on a team, such as higher alpha-soaking capabilities), but not everyone exactly thinks in terms of self-sufficiency. If they did, blasters wouldn't still be popular at level 50.

In the end? If plenty of people still like playing blasters, but you don't see what makes them so great? What does that indicate? It indicates more than anything that blasters just aren't the AT for you. If they really were that broke, people wouldn't be playing them so much. That's all.

We'd still need to see statistics for Incarnates, but I'll make a wager: Blasters will still be popular. Maybe the numbers'll be different, but overall I predict popularity.

popularity and/or fun is really a seperate thing from the relative strength and performance of a blaster.

I mean they make things go boom and hit like a mack truck for the first 30 or so levels. They are devastating in the early game.

Not sure about most people but the higher level my toon gets the less likely I am to willingly delete it. For me a toon that hits 30 is unlikely to be deleted until i run out of slots on the server. As a result I've had 2 of my 3 lvl50 blasters sit in the mid to high 30's for an extended period of time before eventually pl'ing and double xp'ing them to 50.

When every other AT I have played seems to get stronger and stronger as they level blasters kinda go in the opposite direction. However, given the investment of time and effort I'd already sunk into them I eventually just sucked it up and finished leveling them despite them being nowhere near as effective as i'd hoped they would be.

So to sum up the main issue for me is that they start off like a bat out of hell and if you have experience with the other AT's you have an expectation that you will continue to get stronger and stronger, but they don't. They peak early and really fizzle out. Unsatisfying (for me) if you care about the process of ascending to the pinnacle of super poweredness. However, if you are a habitual alter and rarely break out of the level 30 game then blasters are likely the best ride you can go on.

This thread has devolved into useless bickering therefore...

I claim this thread in the name of The Church of the Drunken Squirrel!



All donations are to be made in the form of Guinness.




Also in a team that already has force multipliers having someone that has large base damage to leverage it is a benefit. Blasters have access to more AOEs with a larger radius and quicker recharge than melee ATs and do more base damage than defenders or corruptors with those same attacks so in a situation where your leveraging force multipliers blasters make the team better.

It's like a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich. Buffs and debuffs are the peanut butter and they are important, they help glue everything together. Blasters are like jelly they add that tasty damage to the mix. Sure you could have one without the other but together they make a damn good sandwhich.

I love my elec/elec blaster, I usually play with 2 other dudes, a fire/therm troll and a cold/ice defender, I tank it for them lol. "ball lightning, run in, short circuit, powersink, thunderstrike, ball lightning, look for survivors, get sad, look for more people to fight" is how it usually goes for me.

blasters do have some pretty awesome side effects, its pretty cool when no one can attack me, nevermind defense or res, they dont have the end to use their powers...elec blaster love

then again I can do everything that my group does solo on my tank, at a much slower speed of course.

The problem with blasters is at a point in the game, not the entire game.

Its post level 30, when mobs get tougher and you need to add +1 or more to make reasonable level progress. 35-50 is over 50% of the leveling time.

But before the point where you are swimming in influence and are slotting sets of purples. Early to mid incarnate, assuming you arent a vet already loaded with influence.

Which is at this point at least 80%+ of the game.

I made a new blaster because I didn't have anything else I could use to take advantage of double exp. Rad/MM, 34 at the moment. This thread hadn't even crossed my mind until I saw it again just now but once again, it is to laugh. I'm not even up to 25% defense yet and already I can do outrageous things that I sincerely doubt most other ATs will be doing at this level.

Soloing on x8? Nope, not going to happen until my build is complete, yet tanking spawns for a full task force is trivial with just the inspirations that drop. Tanking them and leaving them half dead and debuffed for the rest of the team to sweep in and mop up, that is. Sometimes they don't even get a crack at the minions! Ha!

Really the only way I could call the character weak is if the only thing I care about is solo performance, and this is during the supposed weakest level range. Here's why soloing doesn't bother me - if I want to run x8 tips, all I have to do is invite one or two lowbies. That alone provides more than enough cover to get away with unfettered blasting with a half finished build that will cost maybe 1.5 billion when it's done if I'm impatient. When it is done, I plan to be 2x8 farming-ready. Superfluous indeed.

"IOs are irrelevant to whether blasters are under-performing in the late game" is a comical statement. Where do most people use IOs? The late game. Where in the game does pretty much everyone have IOs as it stands on the live servers today? The late game. In fact, it's really only on the forums that I see people advocating SO usage at all. You can pretend that the game is balanced around them but you're not talking about the same game that the rest of us are anymore.

You know, now that I've said that, maybe that gets at the problem in this thread, in a way. The anti blaster crowd will grumpily acknowledge that things like IOs and incarnate powers exist, but their expectation of performance is based on the exclusion of any player advantages that have been added in the past twelve issues. In that sense, ignoring the fact that there are myriad ways to alleviate whatever setbacks blasters may encounter in frequently elegant ways, blasters are weaker. Of course, so is everyone else - scrappers only have as much defense as comes with their secondary, nobody has any recharge bonuses, and...

Why do I get this weird feeling of déjà écrit as I type that?

In any case, feel free to dwell in the pre-IO world of the ancient past, but know that nobody else does in practice. Even if you refuse to use IOs, you cannot avoid benefiting from teammates who don't share your eccentricity. I don't see how you could even argue that this will be an issue when the free players arrive, which I'm not sure anyone has done yet, since the free players will of course be crap at the game regardless of their AT, as everyone is the first time they play.

First of all blasters are bad at a specific point, between 30-50 and incarnate early to mid-late till you dump multiple billion influence.

Since this point is about 80%+ of most players playtime, thats a problem.

The blaster secondary's are the MAJOR reason why blasters underperform, and MM is better than most, but lets be honest compared to the weakest corruptor.. you still underperform

Just saying well blasters are great and can blow through anything in the game before 30 does NOT in any way prove blasters dont have a problem

ALso saying blasters are fine post mutlipurple does not prove blasters dont have a problem

80% or so of most players playtime is between these two points.

Also even post multipurple, guess what, a Corruptor is STILL a better choice.