Honest Blaster Questions/Research

Ok so obviously we have a lot of Blaster threads out there. Many Blaster players want a change to the AT. However the big debate is HOW to change it and WHAT really needs fixing.

I'd like to gather some data for this. Not theory, not third-hand stories or YouTube video but real data. However a single observer makes for poor data collection so I'd like to ask the Forum for help.

Make a new Blaster. Don't rely on information or memory from your lvl 50 uber guy who hated Malta 5 years ago. The game is different now. We need NEW information. I'd also like to add a few caveats in the interest of good observation:

1) Run solo first. Yes, this will often suck but please do it. Go through the tutorial, start at level 2 and run the content. Make note of which enemies are tougher, which are pushovers and so on.

2) NO SEWER RUNS! This single TF has done more to skew player opinion than anything. Imagine a new guy just starting the game. He makes a Blaster, emerges from the tutorial and is invited to a DFB. Not knowing what he's getting into he agrees. Over the next 90 minutes he rockets up 10 levels in the most raucous fun he's had in a while. Then the team breaks up and he has to solo. Wow...bummer. This is HARD! So please, stick with the basic content.

3) Team about half the time. I'm not trying to collect data on the extreme ends of the spectrum. I don't care if you never level up and use only your T1 and T2 blasts all the way to 50. By far most players won't do this and most data collected along in this way will be useless. Most players will team at least some of the time. Teaming is an inherent part of the game. Some content (like TFs) ONLY work for teams. So don't solo all the time or your numbers might be biased versus the norm.

4) NO PLs, AE FARMS or any other kind of rapid-leveling schemes. See #2 if you need to know why.

5) No sugar-daddying with a wealthy toon to buy great IOs at lower levels. I'm not saying that you need to work just off of your Blaster's income (because some players will help others out with cash) but the number of new players who will have access to a Numina's Unique or a Performance Shifter proc will be small.

6) You don't have to start from scratch to be helpful. If you have a Blaster in the 20s (or 30s or wherever) who isn't full of pricey IOs then any information you could give would be helpful. This would make collecting data across all levels much faster.

I'm not expecting everyone to studiously write down every encounter. That's too much like work. However posting a few short notes as things develop will be helpful. Something like 'three Hellion Minions aren't so bad but two Lts are killer' is great.

I'm going to ask for the Blaster's Power Sets and level for each post. I'll make the first posting myself later on today. Thank you all in advance for your help.

This will likely yield the following:

1. Blasters are weak while solo but great when aggro is managed for them.

2. Outisde of IO's and Incarnate powers, Blaster's strength while solo depends on their Primary/Secondary.

Apologies for not taking part in this, good luck though.

No slight but I know how to do what you want and I know why I can level faster than most players solo. Solo at low levels knockback and mez slows your advance.

So I developed this strategy to level without defeats:

1. level 1-5 in Atlas street fighting Hellions
2. Head to The Hollows and level to 8.
3. Go to Perez Park and fight Hellions or Skulls (I usually go with Hellions) Collect all PP badges.
4. At level 12 do the Midnighters arc and collect all Steel badges.
5. Exit Midnighters arc at completion at 13-14ish and head to Boomtown.
6. Straight back from the Boomtown door you can find large groups of Lost without Bosses.
I level from 14-20 fighting these and collect all Boomtown badges.
7. At level 20 I finally team and usually do both Positrons and maybe a Synapse and in some cases I have never been defeated all the way to level 25-27ish.

This work especially well for those high AoE power sets. For Single hitters like Energy i instead run mission arcs at +1x1. Slower but safer than the large groups but also you can cruise Perez hunting solo/duo Hellion bosses.

I have played blasters since day one of this game and have seen the changes that caused the issue. Mezzing became so common it really permeates everything. Issue 1-2 I was godlike on my Fire/Fire blaster - I would get people sending me tells to please join them within 30 seconds of logging in. Now blasters are sort of in limbo - you will take one but its nto because you WANT one like a buffer/debuffewr or aggro magnet.

It sounds like it would collect great research data. Soloing to 50 the slow way on a Blaster with no cash? also sounds like someone needs to give me about 12 Purples at the end of it.

It's a good experiment, but you need a point of reference. Do the same thing with a stalker, then compare the results?

But purples have been starting to drop for me regular...(do not jinx me) gotten one last night on a ITF in the first 50 content I ran in almost a week, a Ragnarok. So, more 50 content please lol. I just cannot spend the time doing this, even though I see the validity of what the OP is asking for. Same reason I will not play on test. I already have cash problems from alting too much, i try not to compound the issues too much.

I've been playing a number of blasters lately and they follow a similar trend..

1-10 every AT is awesome. Heck brawl is awesome in these levels.

10-20 Blasters do very well here. No one really has any damage but the blaster. This is the heyday of blasters imo, a time when they are true damage dealers and make a difference when on a team.

20-30 issues start cropping up. People make the jump into SO. All but controllers start to become attackers. Solo most ATs increase their settings not just by the level of foes fought but by the number of foes fought when solo. Blasters depending on type can do one or the other but not both, my blasters will typically die at least one or twice a session in these levels. Because of the way exemplaring is done now other ATs have access to cool abilities from their secondary, typically blasters just get more attacks.

30-40 Blasters have capped out offensively and the mobs HP are greatly zipping past, this reduces the overall offensive advantage that blasters had.

40-50 Blaster have still capped out offensively but other ATs do to their epic pools have now caught up, while the blaster wasn't able to catch up defensively. Mob HP verse damage is still an issue as are the number of Mezzing foes. Harder targets are actually hard for a blaster but are not all that much harder for other ATs. A purple Lt for example end up doing more damage to a blaster then to any other AT most of the time.

Incarnate level play. Level Shifts make the blaster far more effective do to the nature of level shifts. Lack of defense isn't a hindrance, lots of offense especially AOE is a boon. Though no AT sucks.. its like being back at the start of the game where every AT is awesome.

I made a new blaster very recently. Level 13 Beam Rifle / Darkness Manipulation Blaster. Running him through the Warden Arc of Praetoria, and so far it is all soloing.


My initial thought can be summarized as the following: conflicting. Picked to be thematic and not to be any particular build, his power sets have more than just "no synergy" in them. That, I could handle, and have done so in the past. No, the problem is that his primary wants to do one thing, his secondary wants to do another, and both of their abilities are mutually exclusive to each other. Because of the inherent effectiveness of dealing with enemies using Beam Rifle, so far I have been choosing those powers over Darkness Manipulation, who's only role so far in my playthrough has been to use melee attacks when beam rifle is recharging and the enemy is in short range. Since this problem is fading fast as I level up, I plan to skip around half of the darkness manipulation powers.


Running solo through Praetoria at lower levels I have not encountered any problem with the AT itself. This run doesn't feel harder than my previous praetoria runs (stalker - guarding and mastermind - power). In fact, I think it is currently outpreforming both of those ATs in this playthrough. I do not expect this to last forever, however, because I have seen areas that are rare now but will become much more common in the future. Worst event was when I was knockdown-locked by several Seers.

That's how I've been playing as an energy/energy blaster at +1/+1/no AV's difficulty using DO's and SO's. I'm at level 33 now, just recently made the jump to using mostly SO's, and have focused on solo story arcs with two task forces and a few teams (not for my own missions) along the way.

First Ward posed some difficulty with the D.U.S.T. troops doing a ridiculous amount of damage per hit, but otherwise regular enemies are consistently manageable so long as hit and run tactics are employed and the lieutenants/bosses taken down first. I was surprised to find that the Rascals in Croatoa were such a problem; they're no threat individually, but they appear in large groups, seem harder to hit than most enemies and can very quickly wear down a blaster's health. I died twice during the course of the Croatoa arcs, both times due to large Rascal ambushes rather than bosses or lieutenants.

The real challenge, though, seems to be with the Elite Bosses; Nocturne, for instance, must have killed me half a dozen times before I finally wore her down, Arbiter Sands took a few tries as well and both Diabolique and Sorceress Serene in FW were major headaches. The only Elite Boss who came across as a pushover was Dr. Vahzilok, probably because his attack range seemed to be lower than mine.

Mezzing isn't much a problem at this point due to defiance, AoE knockback attacks are proving invaluable for keeping charging mobs at bay, and Aim/Build Up are essential for taking down groups of enemies that include lieutenants. Her progress is certainly slower than most AT's, since a lot of time's spent darting around to lose aggro and setting up another round of attacks, but survivability is still high.

Even though I already have 3 lowbie blasters, I'll go ahead and do this experiment from scratch: it'll give me an excuse to try Ice Blast, since I've heard many good things about BIB.

I personally think Blasters are already fine, and I think the solo experience is better on Blasters than Corrs, Trollers, or Defs, but I also don't like Melee ATs too much, so I may be biased.

I'll keep posting here w/ observations and strategies.

Ive recently started to enjoy blasters.

My Ice/Ice blaster is great as most of his secondary attacks are holds, slow downs or other benifical effects. They work really well with each other, same as Energy/energy. As long as you skip the melee attacks, youll have enough slots to really bulk out the helpful powers.

Sadly, I think that melee attacks go against what the AT is supposed to be about. Ranged Damage. RANGED damage. We ARE squishy, so were supposed to stay back and lash out from afar. If a foe can punch you, then your too close!

Another gripe is that the second part os a bit out of whack. Ranged DAMAGE. Our power is awesome in the early to mid stages, but as we get into the higher levels, other AT's tend to do much more damage than we can dish out. Id like to see Blasters get a bit more bang for their buck, making them more valuable in a team than the evil corruptors that tend to steal our thunder!

Made my Ice/Ice Blaster, Tsumetai, last night, and played around for only 15 minutes or so: for the purpose of researching the experience of a free player, I've put some limitations on my normal build plans-

1) No Going Rogue IOs (this makes me really sad...)

2) No IOs

3) No Hover (this requirement actually will be used to test the validity of a non-Hover blaster moreso than the general freebie player)

4) I plan on living in Melee. This isn't actually different from my normal playstyle, but I'm emphasizing the fact that I won't be playing it safe- really going for No-Defense-Nelly (probably should've gone Fire/Fire for this, but if I don't try ice blast now, I never will lol)

I'm running HeroStats to track my progress on the character, which I think will also keep track of my defeats.

I have two 50 blasters. I love them.

For me, making the Novas attractive, Snipes useful and making sure ALL the Melee and PBAoE attacks have a strong control element (even soft control like end drain, but also high magnitude stuns, etc) would be grand. Up close, our attacks are literally overwhelmingly powerful.

Tsumetai reporting in: got to lvl10 not too long ago, took about 90 minutes in total. Not much to report: everything was easy, but it was only the first few levels, which is easy for every character.

I died once , during Mr. Bocor's "Kill Hellions" mission, only because I was a lvl6 taking on lvl8s, which wasn't a problem until, while at half health and almost killing an orange Hellion, a purple Family boss spawned on me...

Not too long ago, on my server's forum, I had suggested we try a thematic group called the Cheapskates - only slotting what was dropped, living off of the rng.

For me, it was like playing a free account. Pure torture, getting bounced around by CoT mages and their earthquakes. I think it's all a question of how close to the edge you play it - some folks will rest after each mob to get their green 100%, others just pop an inspiration and keep trucking.

I typically solo the whole way to 50, except for tfs - which, arguably provide more than half of my xp. Or at least it seems like it. I like not having to exemp down to get those pesky badges for the tfc accolade.

Personally, I would like to see some changes in the IO bonuses - give me some melee defenses for when the npc rushes into me and tries to hack my head off. Yes, we have mitigation such as kb and holds - but they don't always hit the target. I guess that's what lucks are for. (in case they don't hit. Maybe I should have gobbled a yellow first!)

Other than that - anyone who's having trouble playing a blaster should really play a defender first. You will see more and learn more. Then roll a blaster. (just my two inf)

I will participate in this experiment this coming week, but I have some things I'd like for others to do for me to avoid any "leet set" justifications of my results. Please pick a melee AT and powerset combinations for me. Please pick Blaster powerset combinations for me. Please pick difficulty settings for me. I will play both characters and do exactly the same things- I'll keep track of what content is run, leveling progress, amount of defeats suffered, and whatever other information would be found useful. The only condition I have is that neither character can be played blueside on principle, I refuse to associate with the do-gooders.

THB, I'd suggest a Rad/Dark Blaster. For comparison, try a ElM/(Nin or EA) stalker (since they just got a buff, but are often considered an 'inferior' melee AT). I'm bad at judging difficulty settings, as anyone who teams with me will be able to tell you.

Now here's the thing I don't get. I left the game in '06 and came back in '10. Maybe something changed. After ED, blasters were still the king of damage. They came out with CoV, and as far as I knew, blasters were still the king of damage.

Now, some are saying this is no longer true. Were blasters nerfed? or were other sets introduced? or other sets were tweaked? Or, did the playerbase get really creative and start to do things better with the non-blaster ATs?

Or, is all this in reference to level 50 content where anyone who does a few iTrials can get a nuke and bridge the gap on damage differentiation between ATs?

My blasters are all level 50, except for 1, who is level 35. I haven't made any more blasters because I was curious about the other ATs that I hadn't played before.
If the AT hasn't changed, is it the content that's changed?
Why the sudden perception that blasters aren't king of damage?

Because my blasters are awesome, every bit as competitive as my scrappers or controllers, and certainly better than my emp defender. Every bit as resilient as my warshade, too. My brute and tank will outshine in the long run because of holds or stuns and running out of break-frees. Clarion would help, but I generally use barrier when solo.
And my blaster makes my dom and corruptor look like feeble old ladies. Maybe it's me. I'm not seeing my blaster as no longer king of the damage mountain.