Some ideas for a blasters revamp (or how I would do it)

So, one thing people can all agree on, in todays climate, blasters are underpowered, overshadowed in damage, surviability and xp gaining (due to the other two things). They do need a revamp though.

Now blaster's defence is range, but that doesn't quite work at the moment. All enemies have a ranged attack of some sort or another, so range is no defence, just a bit of resistance.

Now, if they wanted to keep the idea of range as a defence, couple of ideas for them.
1) Make the blasters attacks provide a ranged debuff. This way mobs have to move closer in order to any sort of ranged damage, buffing hover blasters and normal blasters, allowing them to do more damage before the mob can attack them.
2) Add some sort of code, probably inpossible, that blasters ranged attacks do a lot more damage to enemies further away and melee attacks do more damage close up. Range is now defence because mobs are being defeated, and any that do get closer are getting punched.


But, given the new mechanics, there are other intresting ways to do this. Some other ideas.
1) A new mechanic, ala assassins strike, that on 3 attacks, gives 4 mags of status protection instantly, not stopping knock down, but allowing you to get unheld or whatever, and a small amount of defence and res. Attacking is now defence.
2) The ability to crit and choose your attacks, specifically on nukes. Every attack gives a stacking crit buff, at 5 stacks, you will crit next hit and reset it. If used with a nuke, that is one dead spawn. Damage is now defence.
3) An innate bonus to range defence, making it easier to soft cap, and ranged is once again defence.

Another thing blasters have going badly for them is the lack of secondries. Quite a few of them are carried by one power alone and that is fairly limiting. This would be harder, and all I can really say is that the devs need to equilize them all really, buffing and nerfing as needed.

A few new manipulations wouldn't go amiss either. Kinetic manipulation, which can boost your damage and debuff enemy damage or earth manipulation with mezzing powers are ideas.

Sounds good. Especially like (2) from the second group.

#1 from the second group sounds interesting.

I would tie it in with Defiance's damage buff stacking.

Each attack adds .5 mag hold/stun/sleep protection, stacking up to 7 times. But if you stop attacking, and thus stop stacking them, the mez protection goes away. Leaving a hole to immobilizes since they aren't as devastating to blasters (and Combat Jumping will eliminate that anyway). I would leave the defense and resistance out of it though.

Basically, you get mez protection, but only as long as you are constantly attacking. And it can still be overwhelmed, so it's not too overpowered. It will keep one hold, stun, or sleep from affecting you, but if your enemies stack them you'll still be in trouble.

Innate ranged defense isn't a terrible idea, but it isn't really fair to the other ATs, who don't get any kind of inherent defense. Any defense other ATs have they have to expend a power pick or IO slotting to get.

Better ideas there than a lot of the blaster buff suggestions I've seen, but you have to be very careful how much of a buff you give them. They are already pretty much the kings of damage output, making them too survivable would unbalance things a bit.

The issue with Blasters, in my opinion, is that they do seem to be falling behind and could use some kind of revamp. Unfortunately, every suggestion I've heard in these threads seems to ruin the concept (that I like) of the AT. Blasters should be the very definition of a glass cannon.