Blaster Issues - Increased Damage Modifier (Ranged and Melee)
By
Another_Fan,
Posted on: 2012-02-27 14:19 in Blasters
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This !!!!|
Originally Posted by Teeto_K
Blasters need the damage they have to not be terrible.
Remember when Ice Bolt, Ice Blast, and Fire Blast were fast animating powers that allowed blasters to build high DPS chains? Remember when those powers were reduced in DPA so that blasters wouldn't be unfair to one-another, yet no such concession was made in the other AT's, because it's not important if Dominators, Defenders, or Corruptors are unfair to blasters? Yeah, that still leaves a sour taste in my mouth. The only AT who's ever had their damage performance curtailed to avoid stepping on blaster toes is BLASTERS. |
Defiance 2.0 normalized blasters ranged st dps to garbage. While Castle was worried about the damage output while mezzed he left the sets without hard hitting third attacks out to dry.
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| Blaster Ranged attacks should not have Ranges less than 80 feet. Power Burst is a Ranged attack. Every other "Ranged" attack follows the same Damage/Endurance/Recharge formula as Power Burst, so why is Power Burst short ranged? Scrapper "Heavy Hitters" don't suffer inherent penalties compared to other attacks in their sets. Tanker "Heavy Hitters" tend to come with Free Mez. So why not 80 foot range? 80 feet: Pretty Neat. It's my new motto. |
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That's an odd display bug, I will look into it.
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Originally Posted by Feather_Of_Sun
I hate to correct you, Arcanaville, but that extra 1.96 stealth defense was not being applied.
I was in mid-combat. Add up the ranged defense modifiers seen on my power screen there- you'll notice that the extra stealth showing up is not part of the 50.60% total ranged defense. It hits that with only adding one of the Stealths. It is also not part of the other defense totals. The second stealth is just a display bug. |
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No one's forcing them to do anything. Blasters have the option to go all out while putting themselves at risk, or go at range and still do good damage, something scrappers don't have.
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Originally Posted by Another_Fan
This. If Range is a blasters defense why the heck are they forced to abandon it ? Other ATs defense is their defense and they aren't forced to sacrifice it to attack.
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The question is, were your perceptions radically different before Defiance 2.0. That is the way to judge your perceptions. If you perceived blasters to be very problematic before D2.0, and then fine afterwards, you *may* be right. If you've always perceived blasters to be fine, the numbers say that your perceptions must be skewed for some reason, because Defenders soloed better than Blasters prior to D2.0. Blasters cannot solo better, and somehow end up earning less stuff slower while solo. The devs don't even need the ability to add correctly to interpret that statistic correctly: there's no room for directional error.|
Originally Posted by Chyll
I probably shouldn't, but I take offense to that sidewise insult.
It is just a shame you can not add up fun... I legitimately am concerned that there is an unfair judgement against blasters in multiple discussions atm. I do not speak for anyone else's experiences - I speak for my own. I have frequently seen complaints of defenders being hard to solo. I have rarely seen complaints about soloing blasters - to the contrary it is usually laughter and enjoyment of 'living on the edge'. Perception matters. I am sorry I cannot quantify my experience. Blasters are fun, challenging, enjoyable, and easy to play. But heck, this entire game is easy to play. I love defs, brutes, blasters, and all matter of ATs. My favorite ATs are corrs and tanks, so how I became the most vocal defender of blaster honor... I have no idea. |
If anything, the datamining that the devs do *understates* all balance problems, because its possible to be overpowered or underpowered only some of the time. Problems tend to average out, which means a problem they see is the tip of a much larger iceberg that has to be there creating enough bulk to let that small problem rise to the surface. If anything, their datamining overstates how often a player is "in combat" which is the only time they can really earn significant rewards. Everyone standing around chatting would tend to dilute any difference between any two things.
When the devs say there's no problem, there might be. When the devs say there is a problem, there has to be. When the devs say there's a very large problem that requires their immediate attention its likely to be an enormous problem that cannot possibly be misinterpreted as anything else. But its clearly something casual observers are not going to detect. That's not an insult: that is the objective truth. The objective truth is the problem was there, and the objective truth is that virtually no observers - myself included - saw it to the enormous extent that it must actually exist, or have existed at the time. Even I only thought the problems were significant, but not catastrophic. But they had to be, or the devs wouldn't have seen them as badly as they did. There is no other possibility besides deliberate fraud. That means everyone should calibrate their perceptions upward, or downward as the case may be. If you didn't see it then, you cannot rely on your perceptions to see the problems now. You have to analyze the situation more carefully. Gut instinct failed Blasters once before, it should not be given an opportunity to do so a second time.
The bottom line is if you cannot explain without an ad hoc explanation why Blasters so severely underperformed prior to D2, you cannot believe your perceptions about Blasters today is reliable. If you just don't believe they underperformed in spite of dev data to the contrary, that's your prerogative. However, I suspect that operating under the assumption the devs did not defraud the players in that regard will give me a significant advantage over people making that assumption when it comes to arguing whether Blasters deserve another look. That's an advantage I'm perfectly willing to accept.
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Fair question. Looking back at it, right this moment... |
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
The question is, were your perceptions radically different before Defiance 2.0. That is the way to judge your perceptions.
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I thought it was challenging and difficult to play my first blaster - also my first character. Looking back on it... I assume a lot of that was me, not knowing anything about CoH or even MMOs. In fact, Build 1 on that character is still there (a couple of odd IOs tossed in)... and it is pretty horrible, so that perception may not be off base.
After D2.0 I found blasters to be noticably improved. I recognize that supports that there had been a problem. On further thought, I have contributed more levels to blasters post-D2.0 than before, further supporting that I (perhaps unconsciously) recognized the improvement. So to answer, my perception post-D2.0 revealed to me the issue from pre-D2.0.
Somewhere in there I "discovered" corruptors though, and my defender and blaster time both have suffered accordingly. (And now I am wandering away from the topic.)
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
If you perceived blasters to be very problematic before D2.0, and then fine afterwards, you *may* be right. If you've always perceived blasters to be fine, the numbers say that your perceptions must be skewed for some reason, because Defenders soloed better than Blasters prior to D2.0.
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I am sorry I don't understand how you can say that. |
Originally Posted by Auroxis
No one's forcing them to do anything. Blasters have the option to go all out while putting themselves at risk, or go at range and still do good damage, something scrappers don't have.
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Without the third ranged hard hitting attack blaster ranged single target damage is kind of meh and you need good recharge to even get that. You get around 125-130 dps tops with the full range attacks and that is for fire, it goes down for other sets.
If the blaster wants to do their job they have to put themselves at much more risk than the scrapper.
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I don't get why you're leaving the "close" heavy hitters out of the ranged category... They're still ranged attacks which keep you out of a lot of trouble, and rarely do you need to be at that long range to avoid damage. |
Originally Posted by Another_Fan
I am sorry I don't understand how you can say that.
Without the third ranged hard hitting attack blaster ranged single target damage is kind of meh and you need good recharge to even get that. You get around 125-130 dps tops with the full range attacks and that is for fire, it goes down for other sets. If the blaster wants to do their job they have to put themselves at much more risk than the scrapper. |
The point I'm trying to get across is this: When Battle Maiden drops her blue flames, when hydra heads are surrounding the pylons, when Marauder charges up his nova fist, when Anti-Matter activates his devastation beam, when Malaise drops his purple circles... The blaster can still deal good damage, while the scrapper cannot.
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So I'm not a big numbers cruncher so forgive me if I'm off-base with this, but high-end blasters have DPS numbers that tend to be around that of scrappers (give or take) yes?|
Originally Posted by Auroxis
No one's forcing them to do anything. Blasters have the option to go all out while putting themselves at risk, or go at range and still do good damage, something scrappers don't have.
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If so wouldn't that mean a blaster going 'all out' is pretty much the same as a scrapper just doing their thing? Doesn't that seem a little strange and possibly a little off-balance to you?
Now I could be off and blaster DPS when playing at risk and fully using their best possible attack chain might be significantly higher than that of scrappers. If that's the case, never mind.
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AT's aren't just balanced around melee DPS and survivability, there are other factors one must consider when discussing AT balance.
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Originally Posted by Oliin
So I'm not a big numbers cruncher so forgive me if I'm off-base with this, but high-end blasters have DPS numbers that tend to be around that of scrappers (give or take) yes?
If so wouldn't that mean a blaster going 'all out' is pretty much the same as a scrapper just doing their thing? Doesn't that seem a little strange and possibly a little off-balance to you? Now I could be off and blaster DPS when playing at risk and fully using their best possible attack chain might be significantly higher than that of scrappers. If that's the case, never mind. |
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Quote:
I did an analysis once that attempted - extremely crudely - to create a "score" for each archetype that combined an offensive and a defensive metric, adding up all the offense and all the things that mitigate damage, including not just mitigation powers but debuffs and control. The margin for error was huge. But even so, it suggested something strange: that Defenders should solo a lot better than Blasters. How much more the analysis wasn't good enough to say, but while everyone including Defenders clustered their combined score around the same spot, Blasters were way off by themselves at a much lower score.|
Originally Posted by Chyll
But I have never felt that defenders solo'd better (and I've spent a lot of time solo), pre- or post-D2.0... again, I cannot explain that apparent disconnect in my experience from the norm.
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I concluded at that time that this was likely the result of me overcounting Defender properties, because there was no way Defenders could score lower than Blasters in a fair metric. This was about a year and a half before the devs announced that Blasters soloed slower than everything else.
Its not 100% clear to me why Defenders are often perceived to solo slower, but I believe a large part of it is that the numbers and properties people tend to focus on seem to slant in the direction of Blasters while the other more subtle things all favor the Defender but go unnoticed. And those little things add up. I think that is what that calculation I referenced above was trying to tell me, but even I didn't fully believe it (but I continued to think about it, and the longer I couldn't refute it, the more suspicious I got: I was actually talking to Castle about Blasters just a couple months before the Defiance 2.0 changes kicked off).
In my case, the answer is clearly observer bias. Its hard to push a solo Defender to go any faster than its intrinsic normal soloing speed. You can push Blasters to go faster and take extra risk. So I'm probably thinking that Defenders are slow and Blasters are fast and every time they slow down its really my fault and not the archetype's fault. Blasters don't have to die, I just screwed up there. I was tired then, I forgot to use an insp then, I was distracted, I know better. I suspect a lot of other people do likewise: Blasters are fast and powerful, if only I did exactly the right thing at the right time. I just don't want to spend that much time thinking about it normally, but I could.
Psychologically speaking, that's an enormous perceptual skew to have to factor out of anyone's observations.
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Indeed. We are however discussing primarily DPS ATs here and their DPS relative to each other is pertinent. Especially given that a lot of people don't seem to think that the other factors actually balance out.
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Originally Posted by Auroxis
AT's aren't just balanced around melee DPS and survivability, there are other factors one must consider when discussing AT balance.
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What about AoE DPS then? What about AoE Burst? And what about DPS when range is the only option?
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Originally Posted by Oliin
Indeed. We are however discussing primarily DPS ATs here and their DPS relative to each other is pertinent. Especially given that a lot of people don't seem to think that the other factors actually balance out.
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Quote:
I'm probably not looking at it right, but I'm not seeing many instances outside of incarnate content where range is the 'only' option. There's certainly some instances where it's easier to use ranged than melee though.|
Originally Posted by Auroxis
What about AoE DPS then? What about AoE Burst? And what about DPS when range is the only option?
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Honestly we should look at AoE DPS as a data point too. Though I imagine that in general blasters will come out ahead in that regard.
The problem I see with AoE DPS is that it's really only useful to a point after which you need to switch back over to single target DPS again. You basically end up with blasters having an easier time taking out the 'easy' enemies (underlings, minions, LTs) and you're left with those harder targets that are primarily the ones that give the average blaster a headache (bosses and up).
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I've been chewing on some thoughts about this lately, which may be pertinent.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Psychologically speaking, that's an enormous perceptual skew to have to factor out of anyone's observations.
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A large part of what forms our perceptions of a thing stem from our first impressions of it.
There are, I suspect, a few things that contribute to a first impression of Blasters as sharp soloists and things like Defenders as less so. One of these is that the old blue side game favored an offensive strategy pretty heavily. The mobs lacked mitigation, and did comparatively little in return that player mitigation was largely irrelevant.
So at career start, a Blaster is in a Blaster's paradise...it's very difficult to make incorrect or self harming build choices since all their options are one form or another of 'Hit things harder', and the only thing they have to worry about is hitting things until the things fall over. They move quickly, ascending up through the early stages of the game with apparent ease.
This is less true Red side and in Praetoria in the modern game, but it still works to some extent. You need a working attack chain to fight. Damage gains XP, Defense does not. Lacking mitigation early on, Blasters can only choose to do more damage.
It is possible for a Defender in the same stages to make build choices that are less than helpful, and there's a subtle tendency to want to focus on one's Primary since...that's what this character is supposed to be, right? But in an environment where mitigation is of marginal use, any choice that gives mitigation is taken at the expense of DPS. Against the more dangerous low level mobs, such as Vahzilok who actively debuff DPS through -Recharge, such choices can prove lethal.
This, in addition to lower DPS to begin with, may contribute to a perception that Defenders are harder to play, and certainly less fun/more tedious/slower than their Blaster peers.
This all breaks down as they advance and begin encountering situations where mitigation is increasingly relevant and the Blaster has few to no good choices left to make, but by that point perceptions are fairly well set.
You only get one chance to make a first impression, and no matter what else happens Blasters hit the ground running in a way Defenders do not.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Psychologically speaking, that's an enormous perceptual skew to have to factor out of anyone's observations.
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Originally Posted by Radio_Silence
You only get one chance to make a first impression, and no matter what else happens Blasters hit the ground running in a way Defenders do not.
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Observer bias was the case with me but for a totally different reason. When one subjectively compares leveling speed solo vs team they are most like going to notice the difference in the individual character. In other words the Blaster seems to do as well on a team or solo, the Defender does better on the team so it is noticed.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Its not 100% clear to me why Defenders are often perceived to solo slower, but I believe a large part of it is that the numbers and properties people tend to focus on seem to slant in the direction of Blasters while the other more subtle things all favor the Defender but go unnoticed. And those little things add up. I think that is what that calculation I referenced above was trying to tell me, but even I didn't fully believe it (but I continued to think about it, and the longer I couldn't refute it, the more suspicious I got: I was actually talking to Castle about Blasters just a couple months before the Defiance 2.0 changes kicked off). In my case, the answer is clearly observer bias. Its hard to push a solo Defender to go any faster than its intrinsic normal soloing speed. You can push Blasters to go faster and take extra risk. So I'm probably thinking that Defenders are slow and Blasters are fast and every time they slow down its really my fault and not the archetype's fault. Blasters don't have to die, I just screwed up there. I was tired then, I forgot to use an insp then, I was distracted, I know better. I suspect a lot of other people do likewise: Blasters are fast and powerful, if only I did exactly the right thing at the right time. I just don't want to spend that much time thinking about it normally, but I could. Psychologically speaking, that's an enormous perceptual skew to have to factor out of anyone's observations. |
My first character was a Defender and I hated soloing. Leveling seemed to take forever compared to when I was on a team. Practically any team allowed me to level a lot faster. My second character was a Blaster and I did not notice the same difference between soloing and teaming, sure some teams would really click and I would speed along, but often I would join a team and we would plod along only slightly faster. I didn't read the forums, nor take measurements so this was based on my playing perception.
The reason for this perception is simple in hind sight. On a scale of 1-10 my Blaster soloed at a 3 and on a team a 4, My defender was a 4 solo, but on a team it was 8.
Whenever I stopped teaming I couldn't help but notice the difference on my Defender, but not the Blaster thus my perception.
Most on here know that Defenders are synergistic.
When my blaster joined a team with problems there was little chance I could make it perform much better. When my defender joined it was a different story. Controller mezed=Clear mind, Tanker bites off too much-Fort & heals, Blaster dies-Rez & Fort, Team needs to rest for endurance - "Not on my team" Recovery Aura and kick it into overdrive, I want my XP now before I go back to slow soloing.
The fact that I was playing a Defender skewed my perception since MOST teams I was on were rated at 5-10 on a leveling scale, since by being on the team I could probably improve performance. My blaster had teams ranging from 1-10 and my very presence eliminated a space that another synergistic build could take thus making the chance of a great team a bit less.
In the end my Defender was my first 50 and 7 years later my poor Blaster still sits at 35. Funny how my faster solo leveling Blaster failed to level to 50
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IMO of course...|
Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades
Do blasters need more damage?
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No. The damage of the attack powers is sufficient to feel powerful as a blaster. However, the damage is delivered too slowly, both in terms of animation time(mostly) and also as a function of rooting...i will explain.
A blaster will have a very hard go of it if (solo mostly, which seems to be most of the focus in these discussions of late) if they "plant" themselves and attack nonstop. As the animation times appear (IMO) to be "balanced" around attack chain times, stopping to move will significantly lower DPS output. So, the player must choose- move and lose significant DPS(makes leveling slower) or stay planted to achive max DPS, but watch in horror as your foes close in to smash your head in. Scrapper comparison: movement will decrease DPS also, HOWEVER it is a fundamental AI mechanic that the foes will come to you, so much so that this DPS deminishing effect is almost wholly countered.
it could be argues that mellee attacks in general will dole out more dmg to those foes that do close on the blaster, however my gut feeling is that as a general forum consensus, the melee dmg does not compensate for the amount of punishment potential there for being in a more dangerous situation.
So, for the question or MOAR DMG? The answer is in two parts-
One, the rooting effect has never been properly calculated or applied when considering balance for ranged attack animation times- moving can significantly reduce a blasters dmg output.
Second, the secondary sets, while most provide for some reactive "higher DPS", it is not commensorate with the risk for the blaster in close combat.
Moreover: I have brought this up before but- secondary sets for blasters totally contradict what some developers have been saying for years- that range is defense. Explaination: for years we have been told that melee AT's get mez protection, def and res, you know, armor sets because of the mush higher risk of melee combat. Yet, when looking at a blaster secondary: the melee combat oriented secondary sets offer little or no counter to the increased threat of melee combat. if an invuln scrapper gets temp invuln and unyeilding to counter their risk of close combat, what does the /dark blaster get for the same? It is an inherent design flaw that flys in the face of the developer mantra of range=defense and melee AT need armor sets to balance the risk.
Of course the blaster secondary conundrum is likely a discussion for a different thread as it is only partially related to dmg modifiers.
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That's another very interesting perspective.
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Originally Posted by Cathulhu
Observer bias was the case with me but for a totally different reason. When one subjectively compares leveling speed solo vs team they are most like going to notice the difference in the individual character. In other words the Blaster seems to do as well on a team or solo, the Defender does better on the team so it is noticed.
My first character was a Defender and I hated soloing. Leveling seemed to take forever compared to when I was on a team. Practically any team allowed me to level a lot faster. My second character was a Blaster and I did not notice the same difference between soloing and teaming, sure some teams would really click and I would speed along, but often I would join a team and we would plod along only slightly faster. I didn't read the forums, nor take measurements so this was based on my playing perception. The reason for this perception is simple in hind sight. On a scale of 1-10 my Blaster soloed at a 3 and on a team a 4, My defender was a 4 solo, but on a team it was 8. Whenever I stopped teaming I couldn't help but notice the difference on my Defender, but not the Blaster thus my perception. Most on here know that Defenders are synergistic. When my blaster joined a team with problems there was little chance I could make it perform much better. When my defender joined it was a different story. Controller mezed=Clear mind, Tanker bites off too much-Fort & heals, Blaster dies-Rez & Fort, Team needs to rest for endurance - "Not on my team" Recovery Aura and kick it into overdrive, I want my XP now before I go back to slow soloing. The fact that I was playing a Defender skewed my perception since MOST teams I was on were rated at 5-10 on a leveling scale, since by being on the team I could probably improve performance. My blaster had teams ranging from 1-10 and my very presence eliminated a space that another synergistic build could take thus making the chance of a great team a bit less. In the end my Defender was my first 50 and 7 years later my poor Blaster still sits at 35. Funny how my faster solo leveling Blaster failed to level to 50 |
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A blaster plays like a hyper active child -
Run to the left to investigate this. Now run to the righ.... OOOH Shiney. Wait what was I doing? Oh yeah run to the right.... oh but what's that back there. CRASH! BANG!.... A time out!?!?!?! Aw mom do I have to.
2 minutes of hyperactivity nets a 5 minute time out.
The defender is Mom. She follows the hyperactive blaster, cleans up the milk that was spilled, closes the refrigerator door, turns off all the lights that were left on, puts the shoes that were tossed randomly away, picks up the strewn socks, cleans the hand and face prints off the window.
While the blaster is in time out she starts a load of laundry and starts peeling potatoes for dinner and actually gets ahead of the little disaster area.
The blaster gets out of time out and chases a moth around the living room, jumps over the couch, runs out the door and lets it slam behind him, "Aw mom do I HAVE to put my shoes back on?" Runs back in the house and tracks mud in, (Not your good shoes! Put on your sneakers!) puts his muddy feet in his shoes and runs outside where he picks up a stick and starts swinging it around. 10 seconds later he's back in and crying. He whacked the tree with the stick, it broke and his hands sting, and he has a cut where the sharp part of the broken stick hit him.
2 minutes of hyperactivity nets a 5 minute time out.
While he's sitting there waiting for his hands to stop stinging, Mom finishes peeling the potatoes, slices them and puts them on to boil. She adds detergent and fabric softener to the laundry, cleans the mud off the porch, checks the blaster's hands and send him off on his next mission.
The net result. The blaster had tons of fun during the 2 minutes he was active and completely forgets about the 5 minutes he had in time out for it focusing on the fun. Mom plods along taking each chore, slowly, carefully and methodically and winds up actually getting ahead of the blaster even though it took her twice as long to do so.
That's the psychology of it for me. It takes twice as long soloing stuff on my defender as it does on my blaster but I get to keep going and going and going. My blaster kills it NAO and it kills him NAO. I then spend 3 times as much time getting back from the hospital, buying inspirations, etc as I did killing stuff but it was a huge amount of fun while I was killing stuff.
My view is skewed. I only remember how fast and how much fun it was on the blaster and felt that I plodded along on my defender even though I gained more XP on the fender because all my time was spent playing instead of rezzing or coming back to the mission.
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Maybe raise the damage cap to 600% of the blasters let Defiance do abit more damage bonus when making a nice chain damage bonus is around 80 to 120%.
For me the difference is Power choices for solo vs team, Blaster vs Defender. I like themed characters as opposed to toons that just work well mechanically. So when I made my Ice/Ice Blaster my Power choices early on were damage at range, more damage at range, damage in melee or a Pool Power. Then I get Aim (which is even MORE damage...and it hits more often) and Build Up (same thing tilted the other way). I skipped Chilling Embrace because I didn't see the point of getting that close to the enemy when they hit so hard in melee. I didn't understand how important debuffs were.
Then I made a Cold/Ice Defender and the differences were a bit startling. Early on I had not one but TWO powers that only worked on teams. And I had to cast them on EVERY team member individually back then. Then I got to Frostwork and discovered the same thing...I need an ally to make my powers work? I was bummed. Benumb has a two minute recharge base so that one wasn't going to happen very often. In the end I wound up with an Ice Blaster who occasionally teamed and got to use his 'other neat powers'. Not all Defenders are like this (FF get to use more of their powers on themselves) but the perception is the same I think. Maybe this, and the years of Defender players grousing about low damage, set the stereotype that exists even now.
Then I discovered what I call Aggressive Defenders. I made a TA/Archery Defender and fell in love. Buffs for the team? Nope...no Healing Arrow here. Just LOADS of debuffs for the enemy that, by the way, work great solo too. Now THIS was fun! I still love the character more than my Archery/Device Blaster because he has so many options.
As was said before first impressions are important. If your first Blaster was AR/Devices then you might appreciate Defenders a little more because Devices is more of a buff/debuff set so you'll understand how important that is. If your first Defender is Dark/ or Rad/ or Storm/, all sets light on team-specific buffs versus buffs the Defender benefits from, you might not fall into the 'Defenders solo so badly' rut as others have.
All in all I still feel that Blasters need more damage, and more choices for Secondaries, since other ATs have gotten closer to them damage-wise.
"Comics, you're not a Mastermind...you're an Overlord!"
Here you go. As you can see, in combat with +4x8 Carnies, Barrier is at it's minimum (Which I assumed was 2.5, but it's actually 5%! Nice surprise there.), no inspirations or temporary buffs active.
47.78% Smashing
47.78% Lethal
50.60% Ranged
45.28% Energy
45.28% Negative Energy
And to answer the "post ur build nao!!!", I left my set bonus page open. I do not use Mids, nor do I ever intend to use a build planner.
You have 2 modes of cascade defense failure vs one mode for a scrapper. If you get mezzed in anyway you lose roughly 15 points of defense to everything and your incoming damage triples to quadruples. It also makes you really vulnerable to having your defense bonuses from sets ripped away through regular debuffs. The armored toons don't have that.
You also have less HP and resistances than equivalent melee AT builds will have (Exception being stalkers).