Blasters and HP Cap

Perhaps we're looking at it from the wrong direction here. A cap is instated to ensure that a value doesn't surpass a set number which is considered the border between acceptable and "overpowered," no?

Thusly, the proper question would be: would it become unbalanced if Blasters had a higher HP cap?

Again..those poor blasters at the hp cap. You know what getting to the cap adds? Hitpoints.
I guess since blasters have only the one Epic Pool hp buff, that really, they need their base HP lowered, so they can take advantage of the cap in the same way that all the other squishy ATs do. Isn't THAT a genius fix.

Raising the HP cap wouldn't cause you to receive any fewer additional hit points than you currently do. In fact, you may even receive more, if you had an overflow.

What it also does is, as someone else put it, allow buffers to help make a blaster that much more durable - or with blasters, prolong the inevitable.

Blasters get defeated the most? THAT is your argument for giving them a bigger hp cap? The old 'offensive juggernaught, no defences' AT? Oh wait..could it be that they pump out larger amounts of damage, often aoe, and by default..have no way to avoid, resist, or heal from damage? No, no..that wouldn't do it at all! Or perhaps that a good portion of blasters PLAY like nutters? (how else would you play them?)

Again, stop with the 'blasters are at hp cap, and have no benefit.' Every other squishy AT caps out at 1600 hp. Blasters are there already! (with a bit of slotting and accos). Sure, this means Frostwork (you know, the ONLY hp buff in normal play) will not do a lot, at 50. Nevermind that, during the 1-47 (non IOd) progress, FW WILL be nice on them.

So ... the only bad thing about already able to hit the cap at 50 is..those cold dom toons get to use FW on a different team member. Damn it, I want to hog ALL the buffs, even ones that do nothing.

I'm in favor of raising the blaster HP cap. But, similarly, I'm in favor of raising EVERY AT's HP cap.

+HP is possibly the ONLY non-broken form of Mitigation we have in this game. Contrast it with, Defense and Resistance, both of which give accelerating returns, each point giving more and more survival time than the previous until near the cap gaining even 5 points of defense doubles your lifespan. Meanwhile, Each HP point you gain increases your Health bar in a linear fashion. Having twice as much HP means it takes twice as much DPS to kill you in the same amount of time.

I'm strongly in favor of not only increasing blaster HP cap to +100% above base, but doing the same for ALL AT's. Mostly for the sake of making Frostworks good.

Those are my 2 cents.

I think the Blaster HP cap is fine, it's in line with the other squishies. If anything the most fair solution is to make all HP caps a direct function of base HP, so that those who start with more HP have proportionately higher HP caps, and then give the four Melee ATs a slightly different forumla with a better proportion. That would level the playing field enough and still let Stalkers have more HP than Blasters. Oh **** I just used logic... and common sense... nevermind the Devs will never do this.

Ideally the formula for all ATs except the 4 Melees (and maybe Epic ATs if exceptions are made for them) should still have enough room so that if you take a +Max HP power, regardless of the fact that it may be an Epic power, AND have all the +HP accolades you should still be below the cap (BUT NOT BY MUCH). Thus +HP Set Bonuses wouldn't be useless in those builds. This will assume that every Dull Pain is +60% HP when enhanced (same as the majority of these powers).

If base HP = 1, with accolades = 1.2base, and with a 100% enhanced Dull Pain type power = 1.8base, then the HP cap should be around 2.0base.

Controllers: 1017 -> 2034 (current cap 1606)
Blasters: 1205 -> 2410 (current cap 1606)

That leaves enough room for some HP bonuses to not end up being useless. I guess most people would look at these numbers and say they are too big and that squishies wouldn't be squishy anymore. Well then maybe the ALL +HP powers including Dull Pain clones should be re-evaluted to give less. I personally would say that as the game stands now, HP caps being either 1.9X or 2.0X the base HP seems fair.


For the Melees hitting the HP cap even with a primary or secondary power like Dull Pain and all Accolades shouldn't be so easy, because building for massive HP is a viable strategy. I think a different formula is needed for the "front-line" ATs. If 2.0 is the standard for all others, then Tankers, Brutes, Scrappers, and even Stalkers should have a higher ratio... something around 2.1X - 2.3X the base HP. I am fine with making the +HP Rebirth actually useful by giving the Melee ATs a capacity for huge HP, since they're supposed to be up there getting beat up anyways. I'd like to see more than 2 ally buffs that increase HP as well, but not everyone agrees with that. If the cap was set at 2.3X, then we would see:

Tanker: 1874 -> 4310 (current cap 3563)
Brute: 1499 -> 3448 (current cap 3212)
Scrapper: 1339 -> 3080 (current cap 2409)
Stalker: 1204 -> 2769 (current cap 1606, being raised to 2000ish)

These are pretty ridiculohuge numbers though, especially with the Tanker's current base HP. Again, maybe all the +HP powers in the game should be re-evaluated to give a bit less, then we wouldn't need such huge HP caps as arguments against the powers themselves. On the other hand, who here wants to play a well built Invuln Tank who gets hit with a Frostwork and suddenly has 4310 HP, I know I'm raising my hand. Is it still "overpowered" if we are all equally overpowered? Yes... No... um... I dunno.

Actually I'm right AND I'm wrong, I suppose. If you look at it in terms how "How much more DPS can you survive" I'm right, if you look at it in terms of "How long can I live against a fixed amount of DPS" I'm wrong.

I would rather blasters follow the "squishy" standard.

I also agree that being able to focus on other things like recharge, accuracy, etc. in slotting with minimal hp slotting is a nice benefit for blasters.

To make best use out of Blaster raised HP Caps we need access to Tanker primaries as our secondaries. I mean, if you raise Blaster HP Caps do it for a good reason. Like me finally getting my TANK-MAGE. And do not take "TANK-MAGE" or any variation of it, I want then for my characters name.