Blaster Issues - Too Many Blaster Threads?

I keep seeing this phrase being thrown around, and frankly I have no idea what it means or where it came from.

The game hasn't significantly changed....

What is is this 'modern' myth?

EDIT: There is no need to reply to this particular post.
Yes, since the game's introduction it has changed. The question was more why 'suddenly' there is the 'modern game' label. All this has been discussed, and I have moved away from needing it answered.

Nope, not trolling.
I have been playing since I7 and my first character/first 50/main is an Ice/Ice blaster. I have multiple other blasters in the stable, including other 50s and more at all level ranges.

Obviously I have no no pre-ED experience, but the game changed for every AT:Tanks can't aggro the universe, etc. etc. As a result, I believe it is a poor benchmark and will move on.

Pre-Defiance changes, I leveled blasters to 50. Mez on a blaster sucked. Hard. I could never carry enough Break Frees. Post-defiance changes, I rarely pay any attention to mez. It is the only AT that can act within a mez - with its highest charging attacks at range, no less. On teams, I will often keep blasting away and just wait out it (unless things are hairy for everyone beyond little old partially mezzed me). Solo, sometimes I'll still ignore the break free. There are few ATs where I pay less attention to mez. It is a trivial issue.

Yep, and those changes were huge, and still fantastic. Any additional changes seem superfluous and unnecessary to me.
Minor issues, IMO. Issues such that I just can't understand the seeming volume of calls for them. Hence my stance.

When the game first launched, there was an actual explicit mindset to at least attempt to balance the different archetypes under the premise that four of them would explicitly need each other - need, not want - and the fifth, Scrappers, would be the solo specialist. Under that model of MMO design lots of things make sense. Very low tanker damage makes sense, for example, and Tanker damage mods were 0.6 at release (25% lower than the 0.8 modifier they have now, not counting the Bruising resistance debuff Tankers also got). Vulnerable blasters make sense, low damage high control controllers make sense. The devs didn't always succeed they way they wanted to, but that was the plan.

That plan changed over time. The devs decided that a lot of the things that were totally broken in this game were perhaps better broken. Defender and Tankers could actually solo fairly easily for the most part - somewhat slowly, but easily. When they changed their mindset, a new rule emerged: everyone should be able to solo at a reasonable rate.

That last part, "at a reasonable rate" meant offense. Defense doesn't earn XP, offense does. So for anything to solo at a reasonable rate, it must have a reasonable amount of offense, and at all levels.

If an archetype was focused on anything else besides damage, this was a guaranteed plus. You got defense, or control, or buff/debuff because that's what your archetype definition required you to have, and then the devs were going to give you damage for free on top of that. That's *the* singular source of the Tanker mod increase and containment, for example. That one reason, and that one reason alone.

But if an archetype was focused *on* damage, this new rule meant nothing. If you already had enough offense to solo, there was no mandate to have more. And a distinguishing differentiator for Blasters, that they were supposed to be the damage specialist - not the ranged specialist, but the damage specialist - suddenly became diluted.

And it is damage that blasters are supposed to be the best at, not ranged damage. From the instant the archetype was originally invented as the Melee Damage/Ranged Damage archetype, to when it was released and the devs placed limits on the ability for blasters to leverage being only ranged, to direct questions posed to the devs which they publicly answered, the official mission statement of blasters is to be the best at damage, period. Anyone who says otherwise is just making it up.

If launch was the era of trinity balancing, and the years after were the age of solo balancing, then the most recent moves by the devs suggest that they are continuing that trajectory and no longer adjusting archetypes based solely on what they absolutely need to function at a minimal level, but on the basis of attempting to translate the archetype's conceptual vision into actual gameplay to the best extent possible. In the "modern game" its not enough to survive and its not enough to not be worthless: the devs want each archetype to actually be good at something, to be noteworthy for something, or at least to appear to have been designed with a set of tools intended to create a unique gameplay experience. That's explicitly true with regard to the changes made recently to Dominators, where there was no quantitative reason to alter the mechanics of domination. The issue was whether the devs felt the gameplay experience of having highly variable performance based on domination was actually desirable. And as they put it, the "jekyll and hyde" character of Dominators was not desirable, at least to many players and ultimately to the devs themselves.

Blasters have no modern game definition. They are still operating under the old trinity based definition of not having mez protection and mitigation because they are supposed to need someone else. Its not because they are too powerful to have it. Its because of an old principle that no longer applies to this game. And even though the devs explicitly stated that Blasters should be the damage dealing specialists in melee and range they somehow let Blaster melee damage modifiers fall to third place. Even the out of date definition they have is not followed.


And even the devs have acknowledged that things are different now. Specifically in the context of defense and debuffs they have stated that while things were different in the past, they believe the defense metagame has become much stronger due to the proliferation of debuffing and invention accessible defense. The devs know the myth is no myth, because they act like the game is different now. If they design differently, its not a myth by definition because the game is different if the devs are making it so. QED.

See, my blasters have never needed anyone. Even less so since the Defiance changes. Given the preponderance of support set mez protections being ally targeted, I still think of corrs & defs as having less mez protection than blasters. Doms too (unless perma-dommed) because they have stretches of complete vulnerability compared to blasters' able to always partially ignore mez.
That I will accept, but again, that isn't a modern CoH issue... I'd say it maybe didn't make it out of Beta? Or not beyond ED? But that goes beyond my play experience.

Ah... see maybe there is a gap. I have never, ever considered blasters to be a melee damage specialist. It is even a niche character design role dating back to before I joined (blappers)... it is 'standard' rather than 'modern'. Probably my play style, too, I look at that annoying preponderance of melee attacks in some secondary sets the way I look at ranged attacks on a scrapper - a necessary evil.

Ah, IOs... YES, that is when things changed for game play and leveling... so at a macro level what are our eras?

Condition :: Name
Beta :: Beta
?? :: pre-ED
Classic :: ??
?? :: IOs
Modern :: Incarnate

(Maybe this is a question for another thread...)

Accepted, and tl;dr.
I just don't feel that blasters are 'broken' from anything new or different, and hence my conceptual breakdown with the entire discussion.

The players have long understood that City of Heroes is not "trinity balanced." But the question is whether the devs tried to do so, and were they making changes to push the game in that direction.

I would say from release to about Issue 5 was the Trinity Age (although technically we had four of those). Basically from release to the GDN and ED. You can see strong evidence that the devs were still thinking trinity throughout this age, although over time that softened (obviously, the devs didn't abruptly change they way they did things overnight).

From Issue 5 to about Issue 11 was the Solo Age. From GDN and City of Villains to the NCSoft buyout. City of Villains itself is remarkable evidence of the abandonment of the trinity philosophy: every archetype is designed to solo, almost as well as Scrappers themselves. But this period is also the "Fab 15" period, when development resources were low (Paragon Studios has admitted that at one point Cryptic had only about fifteen developers working to support City of Heroes for an extended period of time). The devs were highly constrained in what they could and could not do, and so even though their philosophy had shifted towards a more expansive concept of archetypes, they couldn't make too many radical changes. They had to be very targeted with their fixes and adjustments.

Issue 11 to the present has been the modern age. You not only see players getting better at building invention builds, you see the developers start an arms race with them designing increasingly more powerful critters. But beyond the numbers you start to see the developers change their view again, from "do what's necessary to allow everyone to solo at a minimum level" to "lets see what we can do to improve the gameplay of the archetypes." This is a dramatic shift made possible by having more resources. You can start to ask questions like "maybe we should consider redesigning Domination." Kheldians have been looked at from that perspective, as has been Tankers, Stalkers, Dominators - even Brutes, albeit gingerly. And the things that haven't been had been looked at in that way in the past because of rare necessity - Controllers, for example.

The most recent change has been Castle leaving and Black Scorpion taking over powers design. I liked Castle, I like Black Scorpion, but to me they are very different designers. I think Castle was more conservative than Black Scorpion, and Castle was more inclined to limit the discretion of his designers. I think Black Scorpion is more expansive, and willing to extend more latitude. I think that's neither good nor bad: its just my impression of the way they work. And I think many other players have seen the increased "aggressiveness" of the design team - for good and sometimes bad - in post I18ish stuff.

The combination of the general trend towards redefining archetypes in terms of desirable unique gameplay rather than "numerically possible to solo" or "fits team role" combined with the more experimental nature of the dev team today makes "the modern game" a fundamentally different place than it was at any other time, and its a recent thing.


I have three operational definitions of "broken." The first is "unplayable." But nothing is unplayable to me. You could cut my damage in half and force me to play without enhancements and Blasters wouldn't be unplayable. This definition of broken isn't useful for judging the design of the game, because its subjective, manipulatable (people love to say things are broken just to get a buff, then say they are awesome just to support them), and almost impossible to objectively satisfy.

Then there is "broken by the devs design criteria." If the devs say something should be X, and its actually Y, then its wrong. It doesn't matter if Y is just as good, it doesn't even matter if people prefer Y. If the devs aim for X and miss, then they missed. And its certainly true that if the devs say every archetype should have similar performance, then if one archetype fails that criteria by a large amount, its broken. And prior to the D2.0 changes, Blasters were broken. It doesn't matter how many anecdotes show up about how awesome Blasters are if the devs determine that most people fail to achieve anything close to the same performance with them as other things.

What's amazing is that the devs have never said that Blasters should be much harder to play and as a consequence they might progress slower for less experienced players, but they *have* said that about another archetype: Kheldians. And prior to I13, Blasters underperformed Kheldians.

But the modern game, the game really of the last two years or so, isn't even aiming at those simple targets. The Domination changes and other similar changes are showing that the devs are aiming for "every archetype should have a unique and desirable gameplay experience that does not impair their performance." I think there's no question Blasters fail to achieve that for the average player. They are "broken" in that regard because they lack a compass to guide the devs in what to give to blasters. Blasters only have a list of what not to give. In the modern game, being something with a list of DO-NOTs hanging around your neck and no list of DO is an enormous design penalty, and perhaps you need to have years of experience dealing with the devs to fully appreciate that.

What I don't need to guess is that the devs have admitted in the past that the Blaster tradeoff was never "right" to them, but that in the past they never had the resources to fully examine that problem. But that was the old game. They have the resources in the modern game, or they would not be tinkering with Stalkers, whose problems are less quantitative and more perceptual. If the devs have the time to address the problem that stalkers are perceived to have gameplay issues (dependence on stealth is a gameplay problem, not a quantitative problem, just as oscillating performance around Domination is a gameplay problem, not a quantitative problem) then they certainly have time to look at blasters that have *both* quantitative issues and gameplay problems.


And its not that I have problems playing Blasters and you don't, so I see a problem you do not. I've been playing Blasters since release, and I do fine. Statistically, probably better than 99.9% of all players given the underperformance data of I13. I see the problems in spite of my ability to play Blasters well. I play everything well. I played MA/SR at release and made it work. If making it work meant there was no problems, MA/SR would still be what it was at release - which today would be hopelessly underperforming.

The back handed superiority slap that makes me want to disagree again.

(Probably unintentioned, but the implication was unpleasant, particularly given how well thought out the entire post clearly was. Maybe I'm just too sensitive today...)

What implication are you perceiving? There's no superiority, no 'slap' in the statement you quoted.

All she did was reiterate that she doesn't experience an issue playing blasters. That she isn't trying to get blasters fixed because she EXPERIENCES a problem that you do not experience, but instead because she's AWARE of a problem.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.

The implication was that I was incapable of such fine awareness during my own game play. (Again, I may have taken too much in it. But, after extended discussion where my voice was so much one side, at first read it was easy to feel it directed towards me specifically rather than generally.)

Yes, it has.

8 years ago, there were no IOs. No ATOs. No catalyzed ATOs. No procs. Fitness was not inherent. Every power in the game at that time that did knockback did knockback, not knock down. Burn didn't make mobs run away. No Incarnates and no incarnate powers. No level shifts. No villains. No villain ATs. No villain ATs that now play hero side, and no hero ATs that now play villain side. Scrappers were debt machines (yes, they were). Nobody wanted anything other than an Empathy defender on their team. There was no "punchvoke," so you had better be playing your Tank as a tauntbot. You could slot your powers with 6 of any given SO enhancement with absolutely no decrease in the effectiveness of any individual enhancement. No limit on the number of enemies you could make go agro on you at any given time. Herding was the norm. Werewolf farms were run on a near constant basis to power level.

I could go on, but if you haven't noticed the error in your words, I don't know what to tell you.

You are late to the party:

1. And I already admitted - yes the game has changed since introduction
2. I meant recently - as in why now all this discussion (and Arcanaville answered that nicely)

I find that reading Arcana's posts makes much more sense if I don't look for implications or try to infer things she didn't explicitly say.

This is perhaps noticeable to me because I find that many of my misunderstandings come from similar problems (people look for implications and try to infer things that I never intended).

Agreed, and my same general principle.

That's why I called it out because it struck me unexpectedly, but as noted, probably because it was feeling more like a conversation - chat-style rather than forum style - than normal.

You yourself said you were only commenting on your own personal perceptions of Blasters. So if I'm commenting on problems globally with Blasters, they would likely be outside your personal experience.

What's more, there's a way to objectively decide one way or the other. If your personal evaluation of Blasters prior to Defiance 2.0 was that they were fine, that contradicts the objective evidence we have. This would prove that the problems the majority of other players were having were happening outside your experience, so you would not have knowledge of them.

The fact of the matter is for everyone there are certain areas their intuition reasonably represents reality, and other areas where it does not. To imply that yours does not in this area is neither a compliment nor an insult. Its simply a conjecture which explains the evidence.

I'm actually honestly not sure what "fine awareness" exists that could deduce what other people see from one's own personal gameplay. I have no such fine awareness myself. I don't even think it can actually exist. My ability to judge what other people likely see comes not directly from my own gameplay, but from observing other people play and comparing that judgment to the performance information we have. When my judgment fails to align with the facts, I conclude that's an area where I either underestimate or overestimate the likely performance of other players. I then adjust accordingly. For example, the performance information we have from the devs on Blasters prior to Defiance 2.0 is such that my assessment of Blasters was adjusted down radically, because had you asked me how well Blasters soloed, I would have said they soloed second-worst after Defenders. And I was wrong - Defenders soloed better. That caused me to bump Defenders upwards a bit relative to my own inclinations, and bump Blasters radically downward relative to my own inclinations. Because that's the only way to improve one's judgment.

Its actually the same process I use as a once and former trainer. Its extremely difficult to know what your students will think is easy or hard. You have to make guesses, then actually observe real students, and then be honest with yourself as to which of your guesses was right and which were wrong, and try to adjust your own judgment accordingly. I have never met anyone who just instinctively knew, right from the start. Except for people who turn out to be wrong.


The only thing "fine awareness" can extrapolate from personal experience, in my judgment, is to judge potential. But it cannot directly judge the degree to which other people will extract that potential. Even there, I can and often do disagree with people as to the potential of a situation. But I don't doubt that the ability to judge potential exists from normal gameplay. But I don't think anyone has the ability to judge what the average person will do intrinsically, without some way to educate that judgment with real data. Without that feedback, anecdotes have proven to be extremely vulnerable to skew.

Suffice to say I am over the perceived slight. I would plead that it has been a long week at work, and hence I was looking at everything wrong. But, that probably has nothing to do with it.

The two separate threads coalesced into a single discussion that clarified things nicely for me.

And, I must say, it would be totally worth it to sit down and share beverages and talk in person with Arcanaville some time.