Blaster performance test.

Fun fact: Arachnos soldiers, without specializing and only using the four single target attacks that come in wolf spider, deal greater single target damage on average than a blaster who has not taken or does not possess melee attacks in their secondary.

A comment I made about Back In The Day, in response to another comment about Back In The Day, was being misquoted as relevant to current affairs, and being used as a grand strawman. I have no problem with ceasing to talk about 2005, but then we ALL have to stop talking about the days when Scrappers were twenty times tougher.

We all OK with that?

Also, goalposts are moving back, forth, and sideways in this discussion. This is probably because THB, for instance, is discussing a different case than B_L_Angel. Shall we consider, for the purposes of discussion, maybe three different cases?

1) Minimal IO's- frankenslotting or SO's, with one or two shinies- on both sides, and possibly a level 40 case.
2) Moderately priced IO's on both sides, level 50 characters, budget of maybe half a billion or a billion inf. (I can't believe that's the price of "moderate" these days. And yet I could earn half a billion inf through near-normal play by level 40. Get off my lawn.) Pick say the "third-best" AT combination [I couldn't pick that, but maybe we can come to an agreement?]
3) Best powersets, best IO's, incarnate with whatever trimmings you choose on either side. Sky's the limit.

It may be me, but it seems like some people are talking about type 3 Blasters as compared to type 1 Scrappers. . . if we're giving the type 2 Blaster capped Range defense, then we should give a type 2 Willpower scrapper capped E/N/F/C defense. And if we're fighting the type 2 Blaster at range, we should acknowledge that it has very, very little damage advantage over a scrapper.

This can be a reasonable discussion or an unreasonable one. If the latter, I'd like to know now.

I certainly assumed so, and did my calculations based on one target.

Sets have to be balanced against each other. This isn't debatable. We can't speak of only the maximum in a discussion that also has to include the minimum, and most importantly the average.

Urchin: You're welcome to your opinion that unless everything is perfect, it is completely valueless. I will apply that standard to your posts.

In actual news: I just had a VERY interesting run. Characters are L15, on a L21 large team doing one radio mission per character. In about the same time [20 minutes +/- 1] the Blaster gained nearly half a level more than the Scrapper- maybe 50% more XP. The enemies were the same [Warriors], and the rest of the team was nearly identical (I swapped characters on the same team.) The missions were different (Blaster one was a warehouse with three ambushes), and the mission owner levelled in the second mission, but I think there were two critical differences: 1) Teamwipe in second mission adding a couple minutes to the mission and 2) I was hitting 2-3 people with the Shadow Maul/Sands of Mu combo vs. hitting 5-10 with Psychic Scream/Energy Torrent . And I think 1) was strongly influenced by 2). On an 8-person team you wouldn't expect one blaster to make that much difference, but it did. There may just not be a lot of other AOE around at that level.

Except proclaim "lolveats".

I don't see you in other threads telling people they should use those powersets.

Whatever man. I'm done.

I'll drop a note in here about my Energy/Fire blaster, since come Tuesday I'll likely be starting my Staff/(I am leaning towards DA or Invuln) scrapper.

Pretty smooth run so far. I had one death pre-10 in a safeguard mission on the bank robbing boss and a bunch of close calls. Ran the new Atlas content up to level 8, then did some scanners and the safeguard in KR to hit lvl 9. I ran a DFB with XP turned off, but netted a few useful SOs and the end recovery power (unfortunately my FRAPs freaked out and I couldn't record much of this).

Leveled from 9-10 doing the Negotiator badge mission and one or two other Tony Kord missions (started running with a MM after Negotiator, worked well letting them mostly take the alphas). Went from 10-11 running the first two missions of the Midnighter arc with that MM. Soloed the next two missions to go from 11-12.

At level 12 I enhanced up with DOs; I had made plenty of money off the market selling salvages and recipes cheap. Then I ran Posi (part 1 and 2) with XP turned off. Solid team, fun run.

Ran some scanners to get from 12-13 and then joined a MM from the Posi run for a couple of their missions which got me from 13-14. Things are definitely quicker and easier when teamed. Ran a scanner vs CoT at 14 and got whacked once; I tried to rush into a spawn before my inspires ran out and I didn't make it. Hit level 15 on a scanner vs. Vahz where I made the same mistake and tried to rush a boss spawn hoping to have 2 purples up, but ended up only have 1. Insta-splat; restocked on inspires at the hospital and won (although it was still close because I was conservative in the use of my inspires early in the fight).

Easy scanner vs. Outcasts and then the KR safeguard got me to 16 (sadly the skulls cap at level 14, so they were too easy). Got a team of 3 blasters and 1 controller together for Who Will Die part 1, nearly died on the run out of mission 1. Near team wipe during the ambushes of mission 2, the controller DCd right in the middle of them, but one of the blasters leveled at that time and then the other two of us used Return to Battle to finish the mission. It was highly entertaining. Mission 3 went OK, the blaster who lived through mission 2 ended up as the ambush target here and joined us in defeat, but by then the enemy was mostly gone and the other three of us finished it fine. I dinged 17 in that last fight.

Since I had a good team, I suggested we run Synapse, the others agreed and I found a few more to join. At this point I caved and chose to leave XP on; if I am going to kill all clocks, kill all clocks, kill all clocks, kill all clocks, I am getting the full rewards! Fabulous run, we had two 50s (tanker and stalker), at the start I was 17, we had a 19 controller, a 16 defender, and a mid 20s dominator. I ended up at 21 when we finished.

Before I level anymore, I am considering running a 15-20 arc through Ouro and then I may run Peebles and the 20-25 warrior arc. I have been keeping up on my DOs, I don't keep them all maxed out, but I did make them level 16 and they are now level 21. I have kept my diff on base, except I turned bosses on around level 7 or 8. There are just too many close calls as I am running to feel comfortable turning it up yet. When I get SOs I expect to change my diff to +1 / x2 and see how it works.