Blasters suck, the movie.

I just have to say something even though this wasn't directed at me. If you think because your one blaster can solo a GM that means the AT as a whole needs no help other than all other secondaries suck compared to /mental...well i don't know, try taking that to the devs.

I really don't care how I look to you. I don't care about your Mastermind. This thread has nothing to do with your Mastermind. I don't care if you don't like Drain Psyche. If you don't like it, don't use it. Like it or not, it's a part of the game and I've never heard a dev say that it's not WAI so until I do I'm going to keep being proud of my Blaster.

Wait wait wait. That's going too far. The notion that you can buff the other powersets to compete with Mental is not true, because it seems at least on the surface that almost 90% of the damage you display in those videos is actually the regen debuff of Mental. How do you intend to do that: by giving every blaster secondary drain psyche? That's not going to happen.

If you're going to try to claim the King of Damage crown with a GM take-down leveraging -regen, you have to compare to other regen debuffers specifically. Because of the mechanics of regen, apparent damage is not transitive. You can't say that just because you beat the melee archetypes - who tend to happen to not have -regen - you're damage is clearly the best.

At the very least, you should compare to the other damage dealer that also has Drain Psyche - and a more powerful version of it - Dominators. The archetypes (excluding epics) that the devs have declared to be designed to be damage dealers as their primary or balanced role are Blasters, Scrappers, Brutes, Stalkers, and Dominators. The King of damage should at least beat the best of those, and also tend to beat most of the rest. But defenders, controllers, and masterminds all have -regen also, and could achieve similar or superior results.

No, we came to the thread for the sole purpose of disproving that this is representative of the AT. You posted this for the sole purpose of 'proving' your point that the AT does not need to be buffed. However, it does no such thing due to the fact that no other secondary could do it, and even that only with billions of inf.

As I said, that's not true, but I'm working on a more... interactive demonstration of the principle.

Looking forward to it.

Which would at least make your single target damage closer to 90dps not 55dps, which seems less weirdly low (average blaster single target damage should be closer to 120 dps at level 50).

Maybe access to other debuffs and self buffs, like a Shadow meld clone in /Dark would be nice, and maybe a -res debuff in another set. There are other ways to catch up the other sets too, like one of the traps debuff powers getting put into Devices.
I thought the line of thinking represented in the other thread was that since Blasters have the same primary function as melee AT's they were the most fair thing to compare Blasters to. The -regen only applies to ST damage, Archery still has better AOE than melee sets do without it. Obviously other stuff can solo GM's faster than my Blaster because of better ST oriented primaries and stronger debuffs, but I don't think we can compare Blasters to support or control class characters... You can't have it both ways. Are Blasters damage dealers or support/control? I'm pretty sure the answer is the former, and you can't compare them to both unless you just want to flat-out say that you want Blasters to be tankmages.

I don't think I said that at all, people just took it that way. I'm playing a Blaster. It doesn't suck. That's what I'm saying. My overall opinion about the state of Blasters, while it might not be the same as yours (what an outrage!) is really no way relevant to this thread, and I had no intention of bringing it up until I started getting attacked for no damn reason.

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

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Maybe I just messed up and didn't run my attack chain perfectly. These things happen, playing the game isn't like making a spreadsheet. I still accomplished my goal and that's all I care about.

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

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Right.

Yeah, right. What's wrong with starting a POSITIVE Blaster thread? God forbid we do anything but complain about them!

You said you were just showing off something you did, not stating something about the AT- that was false.

Uh, I'm not stating something that's false. Blasters can be awesome. Blasters can do stupidly powerful things. That's my point.

That's a wonderful idea. Take a lot of sets from a lot of ATs, and compare power with no outside help. No incarnate, no enhancements. See how Blasters compare, then realize they do need a buff.

By the way. You're talking to someone with over 300 alts. Most non or barely IO'd - so, yes, DOs/SOs of varying levels, some slots empty even. I have them at all levels, and switch between them regularly. Often within the same play session.

And with that, I say you're wrong, they do not need an (overall) buff. Individual sets, yes. Overall, no.

Edit 1:
*generally I push for two things - a buff for Electric (give me a chain-shocking Sparky, for one) and a replacement or some adjustment for Time Bomb.

Edit 2:
Idle musing. I actually wonder how much of an attitude change came due to Inherent Fitness, not just IOs. Before, we had to *really* pick and choose what powers (and when) to take them, since most people wanted to set aside 3 spots to get to Stamina. Now, "eh, just grab everything" is feasable... and then we throw IOs into the mix.

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Even at the -res cap you'd be hard pressed to bring the single target damage of even a well-slotted blaster up to 400dps+.


Its not having it both ways. We call the damage dealers "damage dealers" because they are designed to deal more damage in most circumstances. But there can be corner cases when a non-damage dealer will do better, and -regen is one of those cases that has been known and accepted for years. If you're going to compare damage output to the conventional damage dealers, you have to compare in those normal circumstances. If you purposefully aim for a corner case where the normal damage dealers might not even beat the support characters consistently, then you have to compare across the board and not just to them.

As I said, damage isn't that straight forward to compare. Just because A beats B in one circumstance, doesn't mean it will beat B in all of them. You're picking the area where melee archetypes are weakest and claiming victory in damage output without comparing to the real Kings in that one area: the debuffers.

In any case, as I've consistently stated, in general Blaster performance should normally be compared to the other stated damage dealers: Scrappers, Brutes, Stalkers, and Dominators. But its fair to compare them to other archetypes in specific circumstances. That comparison makes the most sense when talking about whether Blasters deliver enough on their offensive output role to compensate for their general lack of survivability.

So you think soloing hard enemy groups on high settings would be more helpful? This was what you asked me to do so I did it. I'm also working on compiling footage of 54x8 soloing on my Blaster.
Well do you think the ability to solo tough targets like GM's is a fair tradeoff single target wise, regardless of how it's done, as long as only native powers are used?

As can all archetypes. Soloing a GM is something less than 1% of the players are ever likely to do, or be able to do. That's an accomplishment unto itself. That any Blaster can do it is great. But that's entirely besides the point of whether the blaster archetype is actually as a whole designed correctly.

To put it another way, if the devs nerfed Drain Psyche tomorrow, if they increased the recharge of Rain of Arrows tomorrow, what would be your complaint? There's nothing in the blaster specification that mandates it have those tools. Rain of Arrows has been known to be broken for years: the devs only let us keep it because historically Archery has had low damage otherwise: it was really bad before it was sped up. Drain Psyche is something we get because the devs always, always, always get regeneration wrong. They could learn to add one day.

You keep saying that there's nothing wrong with Blasters because you could just bring every other set up to Archery and Mental. But that's not true, because you would also have to slot them for the extreme recharge you have. You cannot sometimes be able to survive x8 and sometimes not: you can't set a mission that way. People need to be able to level Blasters, and play them at all combat levels and with normal slotting. The fact that "Blasters" work when you happen to take archery and happen to take mental manipulation and happen to slot them for extreme recharge is an interesting anecdote, but we cannot design the entire blaster archetype on the assumption that Blasters will always have cycling tier 9 rains and capped regeneration. Archery/Mental doesn't even get that now for most of its existence.

As an accomplishment, its a great accomplishment, regardless of the powers used. As proof Blasters don't need help, its a) not relevant and b) 100% guaranteed not to influence the devs in any way.

Actually, I originally asked for the 54x8 because I thought that would be more instructive. I asked for the GM one because I thought it would be too clumsy to use Drain Psyche in that situation relative to its single target benefit, but it seems with a high enough smashing defense it will at least work against a Quarry. Although it takes a really long time because the recovery just isn't there to power offense fully.