Blasters surpurflous?

You missed the example and list of scondaries that do more damage by amplification of the primary than the primary does directly. Look up

Okie but just before we get to that point.

8 fire/fire blasters IT vs 8 fire/rad ITF

level 50 io's only no sets, no purples to make the comparisons fair.

Who do you think will finish faster and easier....

Now there might be a weird point of 6 cor's and 2 blasters that might finish fastest, but in general my guess would be the more Corruptors in the team, the faster it finishes.

I already opened and addressed this in post #26 of this thread.

"The argument that force multipliers are the strongest force in the game, is a given. That fact, however, doesn't render all other non-force multipliers obsolete or superfluous."

Yeah, I'm not sure that all-corr team (or maybe an all-def team) wouldn't trump ANY other all-AT team at an ITF speed run. I hardly think it's reasonable to expect the devs to balance performance based on how the AT operates in an all-AT Task Force. Stacking buffs break the game (See also: Repeat Offenders) and short of some kind of draconian PvE diminishing returns nerf, I don't see that ever changing.

And if that person who they increase damage on by 10% happens to be a Blaster, then who's doing more damage? Buffs apply to everyone.

Blasters still do more AOE damage (barring certain combinations of course) than any other AT.

Blasters have good ST damage, while melee seems to surpass them (again different combinations can change this) in this area, Blaster imo can reach their best ST DPS easier than melee ATs can.

Mind you, I don't know how much Defiance adds to a Blasters ST DPS, so maybe it helps surpass melee.

Yup, they spend more time faceplanted...unless the team is setup to fix all that! :O

Then they can stay alive and make other damage dealers weep in jealousy!

No seriously, a lot of Blasters make my melees cry! Mind you, some melees make my melees cry too heh

Probably not, but that is difficult to reconcile with the desire not to homogenize the survival of all the archetypes, particularly blasters. I've seen what happens when you turn the glass cannon into the ranged scrapper, and its not worth it.


I've found that blasters work well for experienced players in the trials, particularly with good inspiration management. I'm usually chomping a lot more candy in Lambda, and from a purely numerical balance perspective there's an argument to be made that I shouldn't have to (to that degree) but when I want to be indestructible I play a scrapper or tank in there.

Also, one additional advantage fairly unique to blasters in BAF: sequestration can have minimal impact on damage output, particularly if you have a lot of global recharge (and in a rare moment when energy blast is a strong option, slotting force feedback procs make that sequestered damage output even better).


Honestly, I've had more fun playing my main (energy/energy blaster) in the trials than in recent memory. Its a unique experience, and at the end of the day that's what the archetypes are primarily there for.

Exactly. Opposite this-- if we're going to be using a full team of 8 fire/rads as the bar for measure, I'm really curious as to what kind of buff people are advocating, when it comes to blasters. Are we to derive from this, that 8 blasters should rival the power of 8 fire/rads?

Frankly, I think it's a selective comparison that doesn't mirror most play, which does nothing to address any actual blaster issues, much less a foundation for any real argument.

I hadn't thought about that actually. The same should hold true during a Keyes Trial as well since Antimatter's Timestop applies a hold.

If you're talking about the top quote, that's not math. That's a claim, you need to do math to prove that claim. Then you have to compare that math to a real-world ingame senario, then examine the results. You're missing some steps.

Yay! Don't need datamining to prove this one. I'll be looking forward to seeing the evidence that supports this claim.

As others have pointed out, every AT in the game is superfluous. ATs have different styles but overlap all over the place. Enjoy the ride and play what you want, most MMOs are not like this.

Only a Sith deals in absolutes...

Honestly, I'm with Grey Pilgrim on this one. With the design of the many ATs in this game, superfluousness is essentially based on opinion alone. If you think Blasters are under-performing as an archetype, then play an AT you think will be more contributory. If the former is true and you have an actual idea about how to improve the AT, the Suggestions/Ideas forum is over there.

When I get asked "What AT do you need" when people send me a tell to join a TF I'm forming, my answer is always the same..."Whatever AT you'll have more fun bringing. "

You are talking about 60% damage amplification/player from 2 powers in the secondary, that is before -regen is taken into account, or the added damage output from the rest of the team. If you can't work out that .6x2 > 1 without me explaining it to you, and you can't realize that is just the start of what is there, all the breakdown and explanation in the world isn't going to help.

You might as well just ignore every power that adds, hitpoints, to an at, the fact that they can be buffed to higher levels, or just can plain be built to have more hitpoints

I'd be willing to bet that everyone does pretty much the same thing, once they have the group that can get the tf done. That really doesn't say much because once you have the group that can get the TF done every addition is superfluous. It also cuts both ways, it used to be that you would get those kind of invites from a team leader, and when you got to the team you'd find the all poorly built melee team for reichsman, the all resistance/heal stf.

Maybe, but I say that to the first person as well. Really, I have yet to see a TF that couldn't be done with any combination of ATs, as long as the person knows how to play their toon, and slotted.

Anything in this game can be completed with any combination of competent players. If I form any sort of team I take the first 8 people to show up, regardless of AT. Team of 8 stalkers? Sounds like fun. Team of 8 ninja masterminds? Sounds like a party. That's how I play, and it hasn't failed me yet.

And yet you're not taking into consideration all of the variables in that claim. Things like recharge, ease of use, endurance, total availability. Things like that. You're just taking a single value of a power, and making a claim against that. And that's not even going into the whole "but what about other powersets" issue.

So let's take a look, shall we?

The two powers you're talking about are Sleet and Heat Loss. Sleet can be made permanent with three recharge enhancements or so. So yeah, it can be up permanently, but it needs to be placed. And it costs 18.2 endurance every 30 seconds that way. Heat Loss, however, lasts for 90 seconds, but recharges in 360. You'd need an additional 300% recharge to make that permanent. So, a decent amount of slotting, Hasten, and set bonuses to get there. For this test, let's not go into set bonuses or Hasten, because Blasters can get those too. So we'll say that it, like Sleet, has +100% recharge from slotting. That's 50% uptime.

So, averaging out the -resistance on the enemy, we get about a 45% increase in damage. To add to that, most Corruptor primary sets get aim. Hurray! That's an additional 42.5% damage every 45 seconds (similar slotting) for 10 seconds. So, total damage increase is roughly 54.444% damage increase averaged out.

Now, let's see what the Blaster can do. The Blaster doesn't have many -resistance debuffs available to him in his primary or secondary. Yes, he can use Melt Armor, but that ain't so great, so we'll skip them. So what does he have? Well, he's got both Aim and Build Up, most likely. 45 second recharge for both, with Aim being a 62.5% damage buff, and Build up at 100%. Alternating them, or using them at the same time, gives us an averaged-out damage increase of about 36%.

To summarize:

Corruptor: 54.444% damage increase from -Resistance and +Damage
Blaster: 36% damage increase from +Damage


So, let's take a look at a shared powerset. Let's say Ice Blast, since it doesn't have those annoying DoT add ons that make for complex math like Fire Blast does.

Blaster Ice Blast base damage: 102.6
Corruptor base damage: 68.4

Blaster slotted Ice Blast (1.96% value): 201
Corruptor slotted Ice Blast: 134

Blaster with total averaged buffage: (1 + 0.96 + .36) = 238
Corruptor with total averaged buffage: 171

Blaster/Corruptor value: 1.39

The Blaster is still doing about 40% more damage than the Corruptor with a similarly slotted blast.

To top that off, a lot of the time, the Corruptor debuffs are going to be wasted. How many times is a single spawn going to get the full 90 seconds of debuff from Heat Loss? Most spawns will be dead long before that, which tilts the balance even more in favor of the Blaster, who's buffs can be used more strategically. Yes, the Corruptor's debuffs can help everyone on the team, but the Blaster does more damage, hands down.

Don't forget you're comparing one attack. To make it truely accurate you need to look at a chain for each, including the use of the debuffs and bufffs, which remove attacks.

Also, Aett hasn't even brought Defiance into the equation either. Pretty sure that's a significant damage buff, considering the blaster's high base damage.

Yeah, left out Defiance and Scourge, because honestly, I don't have the time to do that kind of math right now. Defiance should help out going from spawn to spawn more, while Scourge would help out more against bigger targets, I would think, but I honestly am not good enough with math to do all of that.

The attack chain should increase the lead for the Blaster. Aim and Build Up only take 1.17 seconds to cast, while Sleet and Heat Loss are both over two seconds. In the time a Blaster can cast Build up and Aim (about 2.3 seconds), the Corruptor will have just gotten Heat Loss cast. The Blaster can start blasting, but the Corruptor still has to lay Sleet down and cast Aim.

Blaster wins by more.