Crashless Nukes *Might* Happen

More on topic of the thread title

I suggested this elsewhere but I would like to see the Rage treatment experimented with for nukes. Only affecting self, or a few seconds of -1000% damage etc. Avoids toggle drops, avoids the hated recovery debuff and endo drain. Easy to balance for the devs so far as keeping the damage output over time under control. Worried about to much damage output? Make the duration 6 seconds instead of 4.

The bad- that annoying feeling of " I cant contribute damage for the team" is still there, with no counter this time. On the other hand, you can drop inferno, keep all your defenses running and use super speed to get out of dodge before the boss that survived clobbers you. Get back into position, heal yourself, use inspirations, re-target and by then the new "crash" is gone or almost gone. Duration would need extensive testing to get right.

I don't see Crashless Nukes or crashing Nukes that have damage commensurate with their endurance/recharge/penalty as the crux of the issue for Blasters. This discrepancy should be addressed, but it does not solve many of the problems that Blasters face.

The core issue that Blasters face is a similar problem with that of the Stalker AT-- they are both burst damage archetypes trapped in a game that has absolutely no need for anything other than sustained DPS. I view Blasters as an AoE burst damage specialist with the ability to also provide solid and rapid burst damage to single targets at range-- the most obvious advantage of ranged attacks being that target selection rarely requires movement of the character allowing for more effective spiking of damage on high priority targets (problem is, there really isn't much need for that in this game). Meanwhile, Stalkers are an entire AT built around single target burst damage delivered through Assassin Strike and augmented by Placate and Hide.

The Blaster role as an AoE/Single Target burst damage archetype is also evident in that both Aim and Buildup are nearly ubiquitous in Blaster primaries and secondaries. And while there are a few exceptions that lack these skills, these outlying sets tend to have abilities that emulate the effects of Build Up with relation to Burst AoE damage. Devices has Trip Mine and Time Bomb, which are direct correlations to AoE burst damage, and Darkness has Soul Drain.

But sustained DPS is what truly matters in this game, and while Blasters have the attacks to offer up solid sustained DPS, they don't have the durability to do such. This is why Melee ATs are much better off than Blasters. They offer 90% of the burst damage that a Blaster brings with the durability to consistently bring superior sustained DPS.

Players have already used IOs to establish that Blasters become more viable if that stack large amounts of ranged defense to augment their durability, thus closing one of the most glaring gaps between this AT and Scrappers/Brutes/Dominators. So if Blasters can't receive much more damage than they already have, should they become more survivable? What if every ranged single-target immobilize also granted 8% defense to range for 10 seconds? What if every ranged attack granted defense to range for 10 seconds, and this value scaled proportional to the recharge of the given skill? And what if every Melee attack granted Melee/AoE defense for a similar duration, again scaling with the recharge of the skill? I'm not sure if this would solve all of the ATs problems, but it would certainly lessen the glaring overall performance gap a bit, and given that the Blaster would become MORE survivable by attacking, it would further encourage their role as a DPS class.

I'm just poking in here at the end, but here's something I've often considered: What about making Aim (in most Blaster primaries) have a much longer duration? Like 40 seconds?

One blaster benefit that remains is the value of +ToHit they can achieve - While everyone else is whiffing at that MoG'd Paragon Protector, the blaster is hitting it, albeit for 13 points of damage each time.

So. What if Aim received a boost? Maybe PvE gets a treatment like PvP did (if I'm remembering correctly), and more damage was made irresistable?

I offer these suggestions to raise damage because that's the point of the AT, and I wouldn't hold my breath on Blasters being given greater defense or damage resistance numbers; but if they were, I like the idea of tying a temporary defense boost to Build Up/Aim, with the theory that the Blaster will at least stay alive through their attack chain.

I don't know recharge and potential recharge for Aim, but even if, would it be so bad if it was permanent? Or switch it and make Build Up actually "build... up," like Blaster defiance, where you activate it and the damage buff raises over time (would have to start at the same value or slightly less and exceed the current value to actually be a buff).

As far as Pistols and Rifle go, you'd have to do something a bit ham-fisted like the Targeting Drone thing (unless I'm misremembering, doesn't it have it's own pseudo damage buff integrated?), and I guess something with Swap Ammo.

If the point of Blasters was to do more damage, let's do more damage! If we value living long enough to do that damage over simply more damage, maybe integrating a mini-MoG into Aim or BU would be more appropriate.

I must've combined the Fire Gausian +Build Up thing into my entire notion of Targeting Drone. /Devices should be given that!

I'd love if Nova was crashless, and on a 30-45 second recharge time like my beam rifle blaster's nuke is probably going to be, once he's 50 and IO'd. That would be fun. Being put out of combat because I used my tier 9 isn't fun, and to be honest, I'm having a hard time thinking of any situation where I wouldn't bring my beam rifle character to missions/TF's instead of my energy blaster, who I probably spent over a billion on IOing. Overcharge is just more fun than Nova.

So yeah, I'm all for crashless nukes.

To reiterate something which I feel like I must have said in that giant, awful thread that we're not to speak of again, Grey, I think the devs don't care as much about AV soloing and other feats of general sturdiness as players think they do. In fact, as we've seen just lately but also years ago, their main thing seems to be how fast players are earning prizes, regardless of how they do it. Brutes and scrappers may be quite good at crashing through most types of content but the fact that they do it with sheer dps and determination, or to put it another way a very even performance curve, means they're not much of a threat to the kind of game balance that is actually at issue.

By contrast, take squishies. They get debuffs. That's scary. Do people use scrappers and brutes to do the really game-breaking TF and trial runs? They certainly do not. Sure, one or two might tag along but they're not doing any heavy lifting.

Where I am apparently going out on a limb is in saying that I think blasters more resemble the latter group than the former. Under the right circumstances blasters can do things that make the ability to ae farm look maybe not quite so impressive. Judging by the state of the game, it seems that I am more closely agreeing with the devs than those who feel that blasters need huge buffs.