Blasters suck, the movie.

Once I get t4 Agility my end should actually be fine based on my calculations. I don't think I'm using the optimal ST chain either, I'm going BA>MP>SS but I feel like the redraw running MP is killing my DPS... I just don't have room for aimed shot, and MP takes a Kinetic Combat set (I slot it with 4 of those, a level 53 Nucleo, and a hecatomb proc. Blasters Wrath catalyzed is in BA and Apocalypse is in Snap Shot.)

So do a lot of people of late it appears.

When I get home I'm going to try this on my Ill/Rad after I finish her slotting. Seems I've been playing her for about three years without all her powers slotted: must have slipped my mind and honestly I haven't noticed. But for this sort of thing I would want to run at full power. I'm pretty sure I can beat 20 minutes without incarnate pets if I can sustain maximum activity without running out of endurance, which is sometimes a problem running everything. Which happens when you forget to slot them all.

Contrary to popular belief, Illusion's damage ain't that great (its ability to tank hard targets with the PA is its real power) so I would consider this to be a mediocre debuffing example. I would expect some builds to do worse, and others to do better against a single giant monster class critter.

Been thinking about adding a giant monster to my performance testing AE arc anyway: good time to do it.

I actually went and took a spin on my Ill/Rad, who has no incarnate or IOs whatsoever. I found the nearest GM (Ghost of Scrapyard), found that without perma PA I couldn't live, then found someone to taunt him for me while it was down. Basically the same effect as some good IOs. Anyhow, point is- I did it in about 5 minutes. I know this is a meaningless number, due to it not technically being 'solo', it not being a Quarry, and having to chew Blues, but I wanted to get back on him anyhow to see if he was worth IOing (I'm not rich, have to be selective).

Interested in seeing your actually relevant test.

Since all the other ATs are, it seems a reasonable goal...

There are two theories on the severely underperform.

There is arcanvile's, which goes "Blasters were underperforming everything prior to defiance 2.0, defiance 2.0 couldn't have been enough so they still must be"

There is mine which goes "Blasters in general under damage other direct damage ATs and if you multiply their survivability by their damage output they have a low figure of merit."

@Twoheaded boy.

Congratulations on taking down the GM. The problem is drain psyche is effectively a 3000+ point attack that only works against enemies with significant but not too much regen.

Defiance 1.0 was bad. And that (and what it encouraged) led to what, IIRC, got the devs to revamp it - excessive deaths. (I *believe* that was the main measure they gave - blasters were dying far too much.)

I'll have to ask Arcanaville to explain "couldn't have been enough so they still must be," as I really don't see quite what you're meaning by it - I get a damage buff for attacking, I can partially ignore mez - a solid mez, even long term like from Malta stuns, isnt' a death sentence. While mezzed, I can keep attacking and even have a measure of control to keep things that would *really* hurt in melee away from me, in most instances.

Now, asking about specific sets, again... yeah, all for buffs and changes there.

As for your viewpoint... I don't know. Not saying you're wrong, but we must play somewhat differently. My survivability's not bad, IMHO - I don't have armor, obviously (nor do I want it, outside of the APPs, in most cases) but I do have various forms of control to shut down problem mobs. I'll close (adding more and more firepower as I get closer,) I'll move away - I'm fairly always in motion. Some things are, of course, worse than others to face (Carnies, especially MIs, are murder on blasters - you can't keep a specific attack chain going unless you're quick, they spawn stacked mezzes and debuffs (DS) as well as some knockback, which keeps you from taking advantage of their unphased window to attack.)

Then again, that makes beating them *all* that much more satisfying.

Usually, if I'm dying a lot, I'm approaching something incorrectly (or just don't care and am rushing in for some reason) and a change in tactics (or gaining a temporary boost from an inspiration or three) takes care of it.

Of course, I'm also not going out to solo GMs - no particular interest in doing so. *shrug* I don't care about running +4/x8. I'll up difficulty (and slide it up or back depending on what I'm facing and how I'm feeling any particular night,) but I'm not one of the folks who "has to run at max settings or I'm wasting my time" or whatnot.

I am, basically, happy with where blasters are now, in general, wanting (again) only a few tweaks to a set or two.

See my Guides and Tutorials

I estimated that I was getting around 130-140 DPS pre-incarnate.using just archery attacks versus same-level AV's. No damage procs, but that did include using Surveillance every 30-ish seconds. Redraw on archery is a real drag on the DPS; I was minimizing redraw by using Build Up, Boost Range, and Surveillance all at once. From what I watched of 2HB's video, you may be leaving a lot of DPS on the table by incurring redraw so frequently. Have you considered using Aimed Shot in your chain, or is that not feasible with your build?

And congrats on the monster kill. That's something my archery/energy blaster could never do.

Absolute BS - everyone knows he was just doing what everyone else does with softcapped defenses, which is where nearly all of his power lies in those videos. Sorry man, but I got on his case immediately. I am not saying dark armor sucks, I just called out the obvious BS on his videos.

I can't really comment too much on Blasters. I have one level 50 (Energy/Energy) who is cool but I don't play too often because he seems too fragile compared to other characters.

But I have to say- when even the guy who starts a thread cheering Blasters and how awesome they can be believes that six out of seven need buffing... Yeah, it sounds like Blasters could use some help.

When the claim is "no Dark Armor build is good", providing even a single counterexample of a good Dark Armor build is sufficient to overturn the entire claim.

Whether Dark Armor performs at the same level as other sets across all types of builds is a totally different question, and we've had other threads to discuss that, so let's not get into it here, but Dechs' videos are an appropriate response to somebody sending him a tell saying "Dark armor sucks. It can't tank anything" (according to his blog, that is the exact quote that prompted him to make his first video). If the general claim against TwoHeadedBoy was "blasters can't solo GMs", his video would be an equally valid response.

True, I agree - I just wanted to point that out in case people were impressed with his videos without paying attention.

Sorry about the off-topic, but would you mind sharing that performance testing AE arc?

Yep. That's pretty much where I'm at on the Blaster "issues" as well - which is why
I've pretty much stayed out of these threads.

I fundamentally disagree with the main premise that a lot of the posters seem to have
about Blasters.


Regards,
4


PS> Kudos to THB for the GM takedown - nice job.

"Check it out! I spent 10-20 billion influence on IOs, picked the most powerful secondary with the most OP single power available to blasters and soloed a single hard target that is vulnerable to -regen more than damage. This totally proves that blasters are fine."

This is what happens when people do not understand statistics, performance, and the actual value of anecdotal data.

That's silly but funny.

It's actually pretty close to the truth. The only other AT that doesn't have a strong defensive primary or secondary at the moment as an *option* is Dominator... and for them if domination is up being mezzed doesn't stop everything higher than your t1 and t2 attacks.

And my next video will showcase my Blaster's AOE damage output, which is insanely good.. So the question becomes, is it balanced? Sure, debuffers might be better at soloing Giant Monsters, but Blasters can still do it. I'd like to see those debuffers pump out the AOE my Blaster pumps out though.. It'll be a cold day in hell. No melee set, even on the same exact budget (that goes for the debuffer too) can match the AOE of Archery/Mental unless they're a Brute at the damage cap, which is pretty unlikely in normal content, assuming the Blaster survives. IO's and especially high end, intelligently crafted builds do a lot to help Blasters close that survivability gap.

So, to summarize, Melee AT's can't solo GM's, and ideally chosen melee sets (for the sake of even ground and no one calling BS, even though they still will) VS. Archery/Mental can't match the AOE of a Blaster. Will a debuffer kill GM's faster? Sure. Will a debuffer hold a candle to a Blaster's large spawn melting speed? Absolutely not. Will a Brute have more reliable survivability than the Blaster against large spawns? Sure. But the Blaster can still out-perform the Brute in terms of the killing of single targets and the killing of many enemies at a time. To me, this is all very balanced. Remember, no "IO's don't count" card-playing, since all of these examples assume high end IO's for every single character and ideal sets for every single character, not just the Blaster. Even ground people.

To me, this doesn't prove that all Blasters are fine, so people should really stop shoving those words or that sentiment into my mouth (you guys are fond of that one.) It just proves to me that the archetype is able to perform at an expected standard- I know that not every set is perfect. I'm 100% behind buffing snipes and making the rest of the nukes crashless... That would help out Defenders and Corruptors too. I just don't think the AT as a whole needs to change, I think that the secondaries need a bit of work. I'm not talking about ground up reworks, I'm talking about just adding three powers max to each secondary (aside from mental) to provide a mix of self buffing and enemy debuffing like Drain Psyche currently does.

I'm not talking about anything with new animations or new powers being made, just some crossover stuff from other sets (Shadow Meld in Dark Assault or even added to one of the APP/PPP's would be a start.) Some debuffing powers from /Traps for Devices. Healing Flames for /Fire. There are a crapload of powers in the game already that could be appropriately tacked on to existing sets with very little extra work required... We don't need bells and whistles and new mechanics to fix the Blaster "standard," we just need little ports.

So anyways, moving forward it'd be great if people could stop antagonizing me and trying to put me down in a roundabout way.


Oh, another thing. I think it would be totally appropriate to raise Blasters to the Brute damage cap.. I could definitely see being annoyed with whoever dropped the ball on that one.

DERP

I hope the devs will leave the blaster AT as it is if you are going to act like that, because let's face it, blasters are WAI with multi billion builds, so thats fine in my books. So long as the Blaster AT has knights in shining armor like you, i see a bright future ahead! On a more personal note, i couldn't mind either if they threw them back into oblivion from whence they came from.

Nice video by the way, your performance totally justifies your multi billion build.

Cold Day in Hell sounds like a good name for a Fire/Cold Controller or Corruptor!
There are several debuffer builds that will be excellent at GM killing as well as AoE damage output, using a variety of primary and secondary combinations.

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