Traps, Devices and the "out of combat" concept
As for Power Burst, sometimes I chuckle to myself when I remember that power used to have a range of 10 feet.
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That, really, is something which bugged me about Blasters pretty much since day 1 of playing them... Well, week 1, at least. They are capable of doing so much, but they are simply never given enough time to do most of it, because none of their tools are capable of buying them time. With a Blaster, if you screw up, then your failure is immediate and decisive. With a Scrapper, if you screw up, then you have time to recover from it, time to run away and even time win before your mistake catches up to you. This kind of safety net, this kind of margin for error, is what makes them so much easier to play and so much faster to level up. It's much harder to fail with a Scrapper for about the same degree of concentration, preparation and knowledge. |
I realise that overpowered characters and powersets are a bad thing, but the fear of it in some cases is irrational and damaging to the subjects it's applied over. |
A scrapper standing in the middle of a lot of critters and killing them while not being threatened in return is not considered game-breaking. A controller standing far away from a lot of critters and holding them while pets kill them is not considered game-breaking. A defender standing far away from a lot of critters and debuffing their ability to fight back while they kill them from range is not considered game-breaking.
A blaster standing far away from a lot of critters and just plain killing them while not being threatened in return *is* considered game-breaking. I'm not saying there isn't a potential problem there, but what the fear does is prevent people from asking the important questions. *Why* is that game-breaking, or what is it specifically about that situation we need to defuse.
I had a suggestion to attempt to do an end-around this problem that I bounced off of Synapse before the devs went on holiday, and he offered to think about it, but I don't want to discuss it too much before the devs begin looking at Tankers as they've indicated they would. Its not my intent to derail that review, but rather set the foundation for the devs taking a look at Blasters next, within the context of what tools Blasters should have in the modern context of everything doing nominally high damage, everything having access to significant personal damage mitigation, and specifically Dominators, Scrappers, Brutes, and Stalkers *all* being explicitly classified as designed damage dealers.
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Think about it realistically - of all the ATs out there, which is the one which has the most attacks which come with penalties to them? Blasters. Their nukes have hideous crashes, their Snipes are "situational" and one whole secondary is full of powers that are either useless or cumbersome.
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Create two powersets of 8 attacks (plus aim, build up) where none are situational. What's the point of that? How many non-situational attacks does a character need? (Of course there are no "non situational" attacks, but you seem to think there are.)
The problem with blasters is not snipes and crashing nukes, it is that their powersets do not synergize (combining ranged damage with melee damage is just silly) and they have too many attacks to be useful. I play corr's and dominators. I see no point in playing a blaster.
The solution to blasters is to mix in weak forms of control and buff/debuff. Of course ice blast has 2 holds, psi has a sleep. Blasters have controls and buffs/debuffs, just not many or not very powerful.
Of course blasters also have the most attacks without penalties to them as well. They have the most attacks.
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Blasters, by and large, are the ones who pay by far the most for the powers they get, and the real sore spot is that what they get fails to blow me away. And I'm not just saying that from the outside looking in. I spent something like four years of my life trying to find some way to work with Blasters on a comparable level to my other characters and utterly failed.
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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The problem is that in City of Heroes, range has no bearing on performance. Its only a playstyle variation. In fact, its not quite meaningless, but within this context of comparing damage dealers it might as well be weapon customization.
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People talk about kiting and how you can avoid taking damage if you jump around like the Rooftop Raider used to once upon a time, but the more I think about it and the more I try it, the more it seems like just plain old herding enemies around you and AoE-ing them to death is safer and more productive. And you're right - Blaster range is seen as such a huge asset that they end up paying through the nose for it, and I don't it does as much for them as they suffer for having it.
A scrapper standing in the middle of a lot of critters and killing them while not being threatened in return is not considered game-breaking. A controller standing far away from a lot of critters and holding them while pets kill them is not considered game-breaking. A defender standing far away from a lot of critters and debuffing their ability to fight back while they kill them from range is not considered game-breaking.
A blaster standing far away from a lot of critters and just plain killing them while not being threatened in return *is* considered game-breaking. I'm not saying there isn't a potential problem there, but what the fear does is prevent people from asking the important questions. *Why* is that game-breaking, or what is it specifically about that situation we need to defuse. |
If you get the development team to re-examine Blasters, then that can only be a good thing. The AT has some serious issues. Personally, for the time being, I'll contend with re-examining powers with severe penalties and drawbacks and trying to figure out if these really still have a purpose that needs to be fulfilled. In some cases, I could see that. As you mentioned, "god mode" powers are designed to give you time to finish your fight, in return for the gamble that if you couldn't finish the fight in that time, you will either need to leave or die. A penalty at the end makes sense there.
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My real beef, though, is with powers which I can tell were intended to be awesome, but were balanced such that the game would slap us across the hands every time we went to use it. It's like the developers put in these awesome powers just to taunt us with, but didn't actually ever want us to use them but once in a blue moon. Ugh!
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Good question. At 80 feet, my energy/energy blaster has exactly three: Power Bolt, Power Blast, and Explosive Blast (which is an AoE). Is three the appropriate number for a blaster at range?
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I do have Bone Smasher for times when the critters want to get fresh.
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
Yeah, when you figure out a way to immobilize Infernal, Nosferatu or Brukholder, let me know, because I'd really like to know. On my end, they ignore Caltrops almost entirely and just shrug off web grenades. If I'm able to stack maybe five on them at a time, they get stopped, but I can't manage to stop them for more than a fraction of the second every once in a while.
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I have immob'd all those NPCs listed, as ArchVillain classes, using the web envelope power from patron pools. I am pretty sure that has a MUCH longer rech than dev/webnade.
As another suggestion..someone mentioned giving snipes the upcoming AS treatment. I can see this working well. Sets like elec could really benefit from a 3rd ST blast. Also, I HATE that to actually get max damage from a snipe, as make sure it drops the minions/lts, you have to use Aim/Bu before hand (unless its AR, then you just get robbed), which, combined with the 3ish second activation time, means you end up 'wasting' a lot of your damage buff. Especially if you use snipe at range, then have to move closer to use additional attacks.
How about increasing the damage on snipes, when they are used AS snipes? Maybe a almost certain kill on a +1 Lt. But change the powers somehow so they do NOT get effected by aim/bu. Think about it..if you are taking the time to snipe something..how can you 'aim' even more? The aiming goes hand in hand with such a power. Combined with the ideas about having snipes function like 'AS Mk Whatever it is' If you have aim/bu active, you can NOT use the long, max damage snipe. If you do, it reverts to teh quicker, moderate damage, not interrupt snipe.
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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As for needing to "up" my difficulty, that is an indication that the power does need to be tweaked at least a little bit to make it a less-situational power.
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Why do you feel improvements to Triage Beacon aren't needed? As an actual healing tool, it's extremely weak unless you have multiple beacons operational, and even then it takes 3 beacons to get close to the +Regen as a single cast of Empathy's Recovery Aura. I know people that take Triage Beacon just for an extra Healing power just to slot special IO's in. |
Also, with the amount of survivability the set provides, triage beacon is superfluous in most situations. It is great to provide a safe zone for the squishier blasters, trollers and scrappers though. That is why I take it at least.
And that is the point Sam is making - the original concept for Trip Mine is very different to how the game plays. The fact that Trip Mine remains useful in today's environment is that drawbacks to using it are just low-enough that people have found ways to use them in unintended ways (toe-bombing). Even though I do like my Trip Mines, they are still a very situational power that can usually be out-performed by other powers of similar levels. |
There are too many ways I could respond to this comment, but at least you acknowledge that it is a useless power. |
That's the general idea. The last power in a set is supposed to be a very desirable power to have, not the worst power of it. |
In the end, this thread isn't about changing traps specifically. Half the set definitely doesn't need buffs, it is already uber. That said, if the devs are willing to buff it, I will still be willing to play the set. But if more people start playing it, don't be shocked if it gets re-adjusted.
In the end, this thread isn't about changing traps specifically. Half the set definitely doesn't need buffs, it is already uber. That said, if the devs are willing to buff it, I will still be willing to play the set. But if more people start playing it, don't be shocked if it gets re-adjusted.
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Good question. At 80 feet, my energy/energy blaster has exactly three: Power Bolt, Power Blast, and Explosive Blast (which is an AoE). Is three the appropriate number for a blaster at range?
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Additionally, how many of your powers are slotted for range? Blasters do lousy damage - unless they put in damage enhancements. Complaining that your range is too short if you have no range enhancements is simply silly.
I'm not saying blasters are not lame - they are. I don't play them. You cannot balance a character on just damage with no mitigation - of course blasters do have mitigation, just not as much as others (and not fire). The real solution for blasters is to dramatically boost the side effects on their powers but have very short duration. So blasters are safe as long as they are hitting everyone rapidly - a very active defense.
But I am saying you are better than what you are presenting here. Random comments and snippy replies are fine for me and most other posters - but you are Arcanaville.
but really only needs 2 changes:
Targetting Drone should be the Follow Up to the other blaster's Build Up. Give a constant bonus to accuracy and damage. They've done it for scrappers, it just makes sense for blasters to have a version.
Cloaking Device should have significantly more defense. Make devices the sustained fight version of blaster and give them more defense.
Additionally, how many of your powers are slotted for range? Blasters do lousy damage - unless they put in damage enhancements. Complaining that your range is too short if you have no range enhancements is simply silly.
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Even with a boat load of global accuracy I still want one accuracy in there, so five slots left for recharge and damage, each of which need at least 2 and want 3.
If I frankenslot triples and quads I might have a slot left but generally I frankenslot to get everything evenly slotted at the edge of the red ED band so those slots go to underslotted powers, not to range.
I can only assume there is something about this particular issue that gets to you. Normally you are good at reason and facts and making a solid case. But here you are declaring that 80 feet qualifies as "at range". I can only assume you came up with that number to minimize the number of "ranged" powers. Why not select 120 feet and declare that you have no ranged powers?
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Energy Torrent has a range of 40 feet, as does Power Burst.
If one of the offensive advantages of Blasters is that they have plenty of attacks, and another one is that they have range, the problem is that those two don't overlap much. They only have a lot of attacks in melee range, and only a moderate amount of attacks outside of melee range and often only a few attacks outside of 40 feet.
Additionally, how many of your powers are slotted for range? Blasters do lousy damage - unless they put in damage enhancements. Complaining that your range is too short if you have no range enhancements is simply silly. |
The problem is not just a trivial matter of not having as much range as I would like. The problem is two-fold. First leveraging range isn't binary: the more you have the more advantage you get: being at longer range reduces the amount of attacks the critters have that are also in range (sometimes) and increases the amount of time it takes for them to close to melee range. 40 feet is very low tactically speaking. Second because Blasters have attacks with different ranges, the advantage of having long range is diluted by the fact that being at those ranges is in effect a damage debuff: you're eliminating the possibility of having your own attacks usable.
Perversely, having incompatible ranges can actually kill you, or threaten you worse than if you didn't have it at all. The devs give a lot of critters attacks that have more than 80 feet of range, so that Blasters can't kite them (I guess unless they slot for range, which reduces their damage and thus does the devs dirty work regardless). So if you snipe a critter from sniper range, the rest of the spawn sometimes runs towards you until *they* are in range and then start shooting. At that point *you* might not be in range. It would have been better to move all the way to being in range of *your own* non-situational attacks and *then* snipe, because the advantage of the snipe is primarily the burst damage, not the range. Except for certain kinds of pulling, the actual range of sniper blast above 80 feet is really an on-paper advantage only: it has no value in conventional combat.
I'm not saying blasters are not lame - they are. I don't play them. |
Here's the entire breakdown of Energy Blast:
Power Bolt: standard attack, 80 feet range
Power Blast: standard attack, 80 feet range
Power Burst: short range attack, 40 feet range
Energy Torrent: Cone, 40 feet range
Sniper Blast: interruptible sniper attack, 150 feet range
Explosive Blast: targeted AoE, 80 feet range
Power Push: ranged knockback, 70 feet range
Aim: Self buff
Nova: crashing PBAoE.
Standard attack usable outside 40 feet
Situational attack or attack restricted to 40 feet or less
Non-attacks
So even if I count explosive blast as a "standard attack" I only have three with the same standard range. To get access to more attacks I have to close from 80 feet all the way down to 40 feet, and that still only nets me five. To get more I have to be in actual melee range.
So the direct answer to your question "How many non-situational attacks does a character need?" the answer for blasters is "more than they tend to have at meaningful ranges."
You cannot balance a character on just damage with no mitigation - of course blasters do have mitigation, just not as much as others (and not fire). The real solution for blasters is to dramatically boost the side effects on their powers but have very short duration. So blasters are safe as long as they are hitting everyone rapidly - a very active defense. |
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Cloaking Device should have significantly more defense. Make devices the sustained fight version of blaster and give them more defense.
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Additionally, how many of your powers are slotted for range? Blasters do lousy damage - unless they put in damage enhancements. |
Far Strike and Salvo are the only two single-target ranged IO sets with any range enhancement to them at all. They're level 10-25 sets and I could get 12% range enhancement from Far Strike and 8.4% out of Salvo. The ranged AoE sets are much better as both of the affordable high-end IO sets have range enhancement to them and detonation actually does a pretty good job of enhancing range (almost 29% as a level 50 set almost 1.5 range SOs). They just don't really give you the option of slotting for range on your single target attacks in the IO system. I know, I know, frankenslot, but you can't really do that and slot thunderstrikes for much defense, so that knocks out one of the big (current) draws of the IO system.
Oddly enough though, sniper attack IOs have range in them ... because sniper attacks really need that longer range in there.
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Oddly enough though, sniper attack IOs have range in them ... because sniper attacks really need that longer range in there.
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For a time, I did play with those sniper IO sets, but none of them ever impressed me. I haven't done anything with my blaster with regards to the Incarnate system yet, save for unlocking the Alpha slot almost a year ago. My intention though is to boost damage as much as possible: I really want to be able to 1-shot even con minions again! Haha.
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Which is why you think I'm being snippy, when in fact just about every blaster reading what I said understood what I said as a simple fact of life and not a quip. The "80 feet" issue is an obvious long-standing one to people who play blasters: it isn't a special thing about 80 feet of distance, its a set of problems that surround the fact that although Blaster standard attacks have 80 feet of range, there aren't actually that many of those attacks.
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Sniping at full range is pointless unless all you wanted to do was snipe once and then leave. If you actually want to defeat a spawn, you need to attack more than once, and the only attack with Snipe range that you have is your Snipe (and possibly Long Range Missile Rocket, occasionally). If you want to use your other powers, you need to move closer, and while you're moving closer, your enemies are already in range to attack YOU, potentially stun or hold you at this long range and keep you out of range of your Defiance attacks but within range of their attacks.
The only other thing to do is to move in close so you're within range of your other attacks, which is what I used to do before sniping when I still played Blasters. I'd snipe, queue up Aim and Build Up and use their activation time to approach to within 40 feet, then continue on with Blaze and Fire Blast, then usually Fireball and Fire Breath if I'm not dead or held yet. But here's the thing - that makes range pointless. So pointless, in fact, that I'd often forego Blazing Bolt entirely and move in directly for Blaze, because under 40 feet is where the bulk of my damage was.
If I had to answer "How many attacks do Blasters have?" I'd say they have far more than they ever really get to use. And that's the big joke on them - Blasters have amazing potential for damage - more than any other AT, I still insist. But they don't ever get to realise that. A Fire/Fire Blaster using Combustion, Fire Sword Circle, Fireball, Fire Breath and Burn is HIDEOUSLY impressive. Or would be, if mine had ever been able to get farther than step three regardless of the order of attacks.
Blasters have more attacks than they need, because what they need isn't more attacks.
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I have had pleasant experiences involving flight, a non-flying spawn, a snipe attack, and a good book to read during recharge.
I have had pleasant experiences involving flight, a non-flying spawn, a snipe attack, and a good book to read during recharge.
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![Smile](images/smilies/smile.gif)
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Earlier I posted about Traps, the Incarnate trials and issues using the set. This past weekend I spent time running a few MoM and an UGT.
I understand the "situational" powers label given to some powers so I had all put given up on setting Trip Mines during iTrials. What I didn't expect was that most of my secondary (which should not be "situational" because it's heavily relied on for it's debuffs) can hardly be used due to the "patches" these AVs spawn. Specifically I'm speaking of the MoM trial.
To make a long story short, during the first MoM trial I ran I purposely ignored my secondary and just blasted away. The two teams were pretty balanced so I was able to play a "weak" blaster and get away with it. I didn't die once. On the subsequent MoMs the teams were comprised of less debuffers so I felt I had to use at least Poison Trap and Acid Mortar, what resulted was death after death after death from being rooted during animations and caught in the patches. To add insult to injury once you die you lose your PT and AC and have to start all over. I had similar experiences with Keyes but with only one AV encounter it's not as bad.
The UG surprisingly was pretty Traps friendly, or I should say you won't die trying to use Traps and the trial is almost perfect for a Traps player with it's ambushes.
I guess I sum it up as follows:
Traps friendly
BaF
UGT
TPN inside only
Traps Unfriendly
Lambda (Difficult to setup when AV runs all over map)
Keyes (Patches)
TPN outside (constant burst damage means no Trip Mines)
MoM (Patches)
Fortunately there will be a solo path eventually so my Traps toons won't feel like useless leeches, I just hope the path is Traps friendly...
Who do I have to *&^% around here to get more Targeted AoE recipes added?
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Arc ID: 413575
You cannot balance a character on just damage with no mitigation
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A thing can't be balanced: balance involves at least two things. You balance A against B, you don't "balance A." When we say a character or a powerset combination is balanced, we usually mean "against the PvE content" by default.
But what does *that* mean? I think too many people assume that "balance" means "a balanced fight." I win, but it wasn't too easy. But that's not actually the most important thing in MMOs. The most important thing in MMOs is actually reward earning rate. We assume that the best way to regulate that is to regulate combat difficulty: "harder" things generate more rewards, "easier" things generate less rewards.
But "harder" and "easier" don't actually mean much if you always succeed, and most players fight fights in which they almost always succeed. And the secondary balancing factors that would kick in within other games don't work as well here: cooldown, recharge, endurance (or other power meter). We don't have resources that we run out of that we can't get back trivially quickly in broad terms.
What's really important isn't how much rewards something gives, but how long it takes to get it, because its all about reward *rate*. That last word seems to get forgotten a lot. Question: how much rewards per unit time would it be fair to get at *zero* risk?
I'll bet a lot of people think the correct answer is "none." I'll bet the devs think that also. But that's not true. In a sense, the game is designed around a certain reward earning rate. Anything lower than that rate is actually a penalty of sorts. That's what debt does: debt penalizes the player by slowing them down. In effect, any activity that earns rewards slower than some base rate is in effect a form of debt penalty.
Now lets look at a blaster sniping a long-range target. As Sam points out, that's pointless in a sense because once you fire that one shot, you can't do anything anymore until snipe recharges (and its recharge is long) *and* meanwhile the other critters will start to close towards you and start shooting when they enter their range, which might be longer than your range outside of snipe. But what about hover sniping, as mentioned above? That eliminates the problem of the critters closing into range. But it retains the downside of being a very slow way to kill. Is that problematic?
The devs seemed to think so in the general case: they actually took steps to prevent hover blasting *except* for that one case of extreme range hover sniping. The question, though, is was it actually problematic? As we've seen, in general most of the offense that blasters have requires being within 40 feet of the target or less. Beyond that range, blasters have a lot less attacks, and thus a lot less offense. They kill slower outside of 40 feet than within it, in other words.
Technically, you could use that fact to balance an archetype with no (or little) mitigation by default. We could make it so that blasters had one kill speed at long range and a faster one at short range. At long range they would be relatively safe, but at shorter range they would be in greater jeopardy. In effect, range would be their mitigation, but it would also be a damage debuff. And that's theoretically a valid method of balancing blasters, at least in theory.
Which gets to the question of do blasters really have too many attacks or alternatively not enough useable ones? Right now, yes. But that very problem could be leveraged in theory to create a better balancing model for blasters. Draw three circles around a blaster: point blank, 40 feet, and 80 feet. Now, instead of "balancing blasters" we instead balance blaster offense and vulnerability at each of those three ranges, and couple that with balancing the combined damage and vulnerability against the PvE content.
That might be too much work, but it would at least work, in theory. Also, I wish I could point to my Make Range Mean Something thread, but its long gone.
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My concern with balancing Blasters at different ranges is that missions, task forces, and even many trials are fought indoors, where there isn't always long distance to put between you and the enemy spawn. It isn't of much use to be a distance fighter where the game provides no distance.
TPN trial guide video / MoM trial guide video / DD trial guide video / BAF trial guide video
/ Lambda trial guide video / Keyes trial guide video / Magisterium trial guide video / Underground trial guide
My concern with balancing Blasters at different ranges is that missions, task forces, and even many trials are fought indoors, where there isn't always long distance to put between you and the enemy spawn. It isn't of much use to be a distance fighter where the game provides no distance.
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In other words, in a system like I'm describing, you'd be paid for your trouble of being forced to fight at close range. Balancing around ranges doesn't mean there's a preferred range. It means all of them work for all blasters.
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Longer answer: in the City of Heroes paradigm, Scrappers and Brutes are already tank-mages by almost any other MMO's criteria. Nothing in the standard game's portfolio of difficulty can kill them, and conversely nothing in the standard game's portfolio of targets can survive them. That's everything a tank-mage is supposed to be able to do except do it from range. And in City of Heroes that's irrelevant because its not hard to get within range. That's why most of the map-farming builds are melee: because getting into melee range is not a penalty for killing everything in sight.
The problem is CoH is not that the game can't survive tank-mages, its that they can't survive having a better tank-mage. If blasters had scrapper survivability, that would make scrappers redundant. Again, on paper scrappers can't make blasters redundant no matter how much survivability and damage they have, because they cannot do it from range.
The problem is that in City of Heroes, range has no bearing on performance. Its only a playstyle variation. In fact, its not quite meaningless, but within this context of comparing damage dealers it might as well be weapon customization.
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