Blasters and the modern CoH

This has been brewing in me for sometime so in an effort to keep from ranting I intend to get right to the point.

The Blaster AT has not evolved fast enough to keep pace with the current game. I'm in no way saying the AT is flatout broken, rather that the main reason to play it has vanished.

This thread points out most of the issues but I wanted to create a thread specifically for discusing Blasters.

Blasters, by definition, are the Kings of damage, some might argue that they are Kings of ranged damage but thats rather beside the point.
Point is, as designed, Blasters are able to leverage superior damage while paying for that offensive ability by being as tough as wet paper.

This makes for an extremely enjoyable and rewarding AT.
For Blasters, Damage is our defense. I'm okay with not having mez protection or defenses because I can do what no other AT can do, melt mobs with a quickness.

Except... That's no longer the case.

Now, every single other AT, can pump out damage comparable to Blasters. While still being much safer in the process thanks to the various secondaries available. This is just with IO's. I'm not even going to bring up Incarnate powers here, as that too is beside the point.

What I want to discuss is the maingame. The SO and IO game. The 1-50 trek and how Blasters compare 2012 vs 2007.

I don't want to see Blasters get defense added.
I don't want to see Blasters get mez protection.
I don't want to see Blasters get some gimmicky new inherrent.

All I want is for Blasters to once again have the highest Damage Cap.
To balance out the powercreep that's taken hold of all other AT's.

So, am I way off base?
Do you feel the same, but want a different 'solution'?

Discuss!

I really do not agree with your comment that blasters 'have not evolved.'

You are talking in regards to just IOs. Yes, a scrapper/brute/tank can become much more survivable, with IOs. They can get insane levels of recharge to pump out more damage. But their damage still wont be (in most cases) that of a blaster.

In the Blasters case, you can get all that recharge and accuracy, allowing you to pump out more accurate and faster damage. They also benefit the MOST from added defence I feel. Now, as I just said, a brute getting more def to get to soft cap is awesome, no doubt about it, but considering blasters have no def in the first place..you are gaining 'more.' Even the ATs like corrs, doms, trollers etc, who also function great with extra defence, HAD mitigation in the first place, due to the nature of their sets.

I have just slotted out a blaster with s/l and ranged defence, and the difference in played that toon, to my 'aggressive' slotted blasters is simply staggering. There is simply NO way a blaster before IOs could reach those levels. How is this not evolving?

I think that Blasters are one of the most unnecessarily complained about AT's in the game and I'm working on a personal project that will help reinforce that idea. I have 13 out of ~20 billion saved up for a Blaster build that will out-survive the average Brute, do more AOE damage than SS/Fire, and pump out the ST to solo GM's.

This is all on paper, granted, but no other ATcombination that I came up with could replicate these results (on an unlimited budget) based on my mad scientist experiments. I'm sure some will give the generic "Game is balanced around SO's" response, and to be completely honest, I just don't care. For my personal play experience, SO's are 110% irrelevant and they have no place being used on a character that I personally take seriously.

But anyways.. Blasters have absurd potential for survivability, damage, and redonkulous solo Scrapper feats. They get short changed by cheap people who don't invest enough time/inf/both into them, and that leads to the assumption that there's something wrong with the AT. At the highest end, some Blasters make all other damage dealers look like gray con minions in comparison.

I agree with you THB.
In fact, if I had one complaint about my Defencey Blaster..it would be that it is too good. And that is not even approaching levels as you mention. I was doing a Cuda TF with him, and the entire time fighting Reichs, with the ambushes (for like..30) mins, I was just bouncing around, and got hit about 3 times. Anyone who had done that tf knows how utterly HUGE the ambushes are.

Is it fun having a blaster that doesnt get hit while pumping out teh damage? Hell yeah. Do I still love my other blapper blasters, that survive by killing stuff, dead, before it can hurt me? Hell yeah.

Just because some people die too much on their blasters (not sure what they were expecting, or even DOING) is hardly grounds for complaining about the AT.

Any AT you have to pump billions, or even just millions into, just to get them to where they were designed to be in the first place. Hasn't kept pace with the games progress.

Sure, it's hyperbole to say every other AT can dish it out, tanks would indeed have a hard time leveraging that much (before lvl40) But it serves the purpose of getting the point across.

You can take any AT and, with enough investment, turn them into a near godlike being. That isn't the issue here. The issue here is;

Blasters are the damage kings, we suffer with being weaker defense wise for this, this is how it should be.

I just find it hard to believe that Blasters have kept up when in todays game my Scrappers and Brutes do much more damage, from level 1 on. This wasn't the case a few years ago.

This may be all perception based. The new melee sets being so powerful and all, but that perception is tainting the enjoyment I get from my favorite AT.

TwoHead is correct, the notion that the game is balanced around SO's went out the window long ago. Samuel_Tow is just now coming to terms with this fact, as am I.
If we want to continue enjoying this game the way we have all these years, it's IO's all the way.

Caveat: I don't want this to be seen as whining. I'm just looking to get the forums opinion on the matter.
MisterD, I've been blasting since 2005, death means nothing to me. Besides that, I'm old hand at this nowdays, I rarely ever die. If it turns out it is all in my head, so be it, but from the gathering of opinions on it, I started this thread because I don't think I am in the minority anymore.

Considering every AT can have soft-capped defense that used to be unique to melee toons, I don't have a huge problem with every AT coming a little closer to blaster damage.

Wait, you are saying..that Blasters were DESIGNED to be super tough, when cox first came out? If someone spends a billion on a blaster, and it gets to Level X Survivability..your argument is that the AT is flawed, because it NEEDED a billion to reach level X, when it is patently clear that the AT was NEVER designed to get to that level?

Makes my head hurt.

I have blapper blasters I spent like 50 mil on, max, and they STILL pump out the damage and stand out of any team I join.

How can you claim brutes and scrappers do more damage, from level one onwards?? Blaster attacks will be one shooting stuff till level 10, and still killing faster (in most situations) all the way to 50. It is because..they have HIGHER damage mods. So you know..more damage? (maybe not higher than scrappers, I forget)

Of course, maybe you are accounting for the fact the blaster is squishy and cant (mostly) just wade in swinging. However, as you say..blasters SHOULD be much weaker defence wise (really agree with you here..I am sick of threads saying fix blasters by giving them defence powers).

Another thing I just remembered. It was a thread I read when starting the game, talking about the various AT's, corrs in particular. It said..
"A corr focused on attack powers is nothing but a gimp Blaster, a corr focused on support is nothing but a gimp Defender."

I think that still applies. You say every other AT can get blaster levels of damage (which I think is utter rubbish in general terms). If the troller/corr/dom/tank is THAT focused on getting more damage, doing damage, constantly attacking..they are just gimping themselves.

(Unless it is for something totally stupid like a Pylon time trial, where damage is all that matters)

I am interested in seeing this megabuild, I'm assuming it's Fire/MM ;p
Completely irrelevant to this topic however, as thats an outlier and not the norm, you are a serious builder so I'd expect anything you created to be uber, as your humanform shows.

But, while your at it...

Roll up a warmace scrapper or brute and an energy blaster.
Slot nothing.
Take through DfB to level 12.
With nothing slotted, attack a group and count how many attacks it takes you to take down 3 minions. >.<

It wasn't like that 3 years ago.

That's my point. Not that Blasters are still fine with high end builds. That is obvious, everything is viable with high end builds. It's that Blasters are no longer demonstrating this design ingame out of the box. *Shrugs*

Edit: to address MisterD, I have no clue why it reads that I think blasters were ever designed to be tough. I meant Blasters having to pump that much Inf just to get there isn't right.

Though, the more I think about this, the more it starts to seem like this is just an issue with the way I play casually as oppossed to the newgame mindset with the game starting at 50. I'm gonna bow out for the night though, as I don't want this to just be a back and forth. I already know my opinion, just looking to see if I'm way out in space with it.

I agree with the OP about Blasters overall.

I'm not 100% convinced that just adding more damage fixes the issue though. The issue may be that they don't do enough damage in lateral ways (based on target caps, based on enemy rank, etc). Just throwing higher damage numbers is IMO not going to fix everything the AT is struggling with.

"Damage as a defense" though was always IMO unfortunately a fairly unrealistic proposition. I don't have a specific solution, but I can say with some degree of authority you will never do enough damage for that to work out in practice, because survivabilility will always have a different curve than kill rate.

Seemingly sidelong issue that is IMO integral to the problem: Mezz protection as a whole in this game is wonky as heck. The whole mezz = detoggle/suppress business combined with melee ATs just being functionally immune to 95% of the mezz thrown around (and BOY is it thrown around) to me creates a pretty much impossible equation for AT balance. There's pretty much no fixing that now because it's so integrated into the game, but I wish when the designers were deciding what and how many mezzes an enemy should deal, that they looked more closely at how severely it tilts the play field. This is the only game I ever played where all of the melee ATs are just flat out immune to control powers, and everyone else gets mezzed constantly, dropping their armor and preventing them from using potions/inspirations unless they stocked the right one to break the mezz first. What I will say for it is, "Having now seen it, I would never recommend such an implementation again to a new game."

How is it taking a blaster 'that' long to down 3 minions below 10? They have such little hp that they will be dying fast. If anything could account for what you are saying, it is that brutes (some sets) can get their BIG attacks earlier than the blaster can get their big attacks. See Blaze coming in at 18 vs KO blow at 8. That is a HUGE difference.

I have five blasters..and every one has done just dandy damage all the way to 50..before I slotted anything but generic IOs. I still dont understand how you can claim Blasters dont do their job (that of just damage) anymore..when NOTHING has changed. Most people will not be slotting IO sets till 30 at the earliest...meaning before then there is no difference at all to how it was back in these good old days you speak of.

Sorry if I somehow read you as saying blasters are meant to be tough, and if it looked like I was arguing with that. What I MEANT was..your claim blasters need hundreds of millions in order to do damage is just false. They DO damage just fine..all the time. IO's only make this better.

To THB..
Not disputing your super blaster will do better aoe damage than basically anything.

However, I really doubt it can be, or will be as survivable as a Brute. You use ss/fire as an example.

The brute can get the same amount of defence, easily. Most likely more s/l with more melee attacks.
The brute has all ROUND resists (not to psi obviously) were your blaster will be 53% to JUST smash and lethal.
The brute has Mez (bar kb, fixed with IOs, just the same as the blaster) protection, something the blaster can NOT got aside for incarnates. And you say you took ageless..so no mez prot at all besides at most, accro.
The brute has a click heal on a great rech. CLick heal beats regen.
The brute has at least 400 more hp, or a decent build. Regen doesnt mean much if you get hit for 1800 damage.
The brute could get to about 50 (sorta guessing) hp per sec regen, which when combined with better resists, is not much of a difference.

Again..not arguing about the AoE damage. But I really dont think it is anywhere near as survivable. I know that regen alone can frequently go bad..and as soon as you get hit with def debuffs..or mez.

My 2 cents:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leo_G Personally, with concern to Blasters' desirability, I think the problem was the AI was always just too dumb. Blaster's ace in the hole was always suppose to be its ranged damage (and damage period). But that (ranged damage) isn't much of an advantage in the big picture. If mobs weren't so eager to run up to melee stuff, being able to fight at long range means you can choose the combat field, either close up or far. If mobs weren't so dumb to huddle together, wider AoEs from blast sets would have greater effect and the smaller, lower capped melee AoEs wouldn't so easily trump AoEs of the blast sets for general purpose use. Basically, the tactical advantage of close and distant damage *would* have been why Blasters would be important, but AI was never addressed to fix the problems in the early game. Instead, they were patched, giving all mobs a ranged attack, giving them such long range as to out-range most player blasts, combat modes that basically short-sight their intelligence and making their reactions scriptable and easily manipulated, and to make mobs harder, you just give them ridiculous melee attacks, mezzes and higher HP. For Blaster to have worked, the AI should not have been made to cater to melee and AoE in general so utterly. It's why the game ended up being balanced the way it is, farming is possible and the end-game feels so gimmicky. But a starter to helping Blasters would be AI that encourages mobs to keep 5-8ft of space between them or relocate after so many seconds of close proximity. Stealing this little tidbit, if AI were ever adjusted, then besides special cases like Storm (and Force Field I think should be buffed with it), -range should be the general secondary effect for *ALL* blaster blasts. In fact, of all the ATs, -range should be of the realm of Blasters and Tankers, rebalanced to be the ATs that force battlefield formations, Tankers by sheer presence and Blasters by concept of literally blasting the foe's attacks down with sheer power. As now, it's annoying and simple to exploit dumb AI and farm maps with a Brute or Scrapper. Fighting tons of guys should be in the realm of possibility for them, yes, but it shouldn't be *so darned fast*...faster than any AT...even the damage specialist ATs!! It makes no sense and it all steams from that exploitable AI. The way I see it, if you want to get the foes to huddle for your Scrapper/Brute's PBAoE, you need to take *extra* time to herd them and even then, their AI would kick in and they'd spread out after a while if you didn't use some means to keep them in place (a control power...haha, that would mean now a Brute/Scrap would be reliant on others for something for a change! just like everyone else is for something). On the other hand, a Tanker or Blaster would be able to force foes into close range or suffer the inability to sufficiently attack back. And Stalkers fit in there because they don't truly rely on AoE but instead ST for much of their burst dmg (nor rely on buff auras) so mob proximity isn't really a concern.

The problem with Blasters does not seem to stem from their intended goal as being the unchallenged kings of damage.

In most other MMORPGs, there is a sort of Holy Trinity Plus One (DPS, Tank, Heals, + Crowd Control optional) which due to a lack of Player Character statistical superiority often requires that players excel in one specific category in order to stand out and operate efficiently in a team. City of Heroes does not have this problem, as Player Characters are considered quite formidable in this game. As a result, dealing the most damage or having the strongest survivability is not always the most optimal state to be achieved because others can function on a relatively similar, or at least competent, level of output and still perform their primary function.

For example, a Stone Tank who uses Granite Armor may take less damage and have much less to fear on the outset compared to an Invulnerability Tanker, but it takes a great deal of work to mitigate the lost damage, recharge speed, and mobility that comes from using Granite Armor - all which interferes with combat speed and efficiency. And if you have a competent and powerful Healer or Buffer, a player having the most optimal damage reduction or defense in the world is only barely more noticeable when compared alongside someone with standard or above-average values even in some of the most extreme situations. This carries over into damage as well. In other words, there is more value in being "Good Enough" in a lot of categories rather than being "The Best" at one thing.

Therefore, the problem appears to stem from the fact that other Archetypes are better equipped to bleed into the domain of other pieces of the Divine Trinity Plus One, while Blasters are, until VERY late in their development compared to other Archetypes, provided few tools to deviate from their core focus. Unlike most other games, diversity is a strength in City of Heroes because it is easy to meet sufficient performance values across numerous parts of the Divine Trinity Plus One with just one character as opposed to other MMORPGs where diverse builds for characters usually results in sub-standard performance.