Do we still care about Blaster tests?

Exams, Xenoblade Chronicles, and other alts have kept me away from my portion of the "Blaster performance testing" I was doing, but I finally got around to playing today with "results" and comments.

First, I'd like to point out that since starting this test, I've rolled 6 new alts: Elec/Storm troller, Beast/Time MM, SS/Regen brute, Dark/Time troller, Kat/Fire scrapper, and Fire/Fire Blaster, and all 6 have already (easily) passed both the Ice/Ice blaster and the Mercs/Pain MM I was using to "test" (most of the new alts were between lvl12-14 when I started testing today, test subjects started at lvl12). Here's a list of things I've found to contribute more to how fast I level versus if "I'm a middle of the road blaster or a middle of the road [AT]"

1) Enhancement slotting: Going Rogue Pre-Order enhancements are hax, and lvl10 IOs are so much better than TOs it's comical.

2) Difficulty settings: If you don't have bosses on, you're leveling with a handicap. The Beast/Time MM found out quickly that -1/x8 was much quicker than +0/x1, and has recently found that +3/x1 is a little faster than -1/x8. In my list, the Melee and Mastermind ATs do better with higher level missions, and the Controller and Blaster ATs do better with more enemies.

3) Street Sweeping: especially pre-travel powers and blue-side, killing all the white-red enemies on the way to your mission all the way across Steel Canyon speeds things along quite well. Or, you could forget missions altogether.. like my Fire/Fire Blaster did- he's been abusing Perez Park, Boomtown, and Combat Medics since he was lvl6. Even though he dies at least once a minute, he's taken the least time to get to lvl14 so far (30mins from lvl6)

4) Being good at your AT: I thought I was pretty good at being a Blaster, but then I watched StratoNexus' NRG/Fire videos, and realized how far I had to go. Going inspiration crazy and forgetting about Health bars are strategies I incorporated into each of these new alts

Conclusion: these tests will be inconclusive: people that are better at Blasters than other things will be better at Blasters, and those that are not will not.

If you're still interested in the results for today:
Blaster gained 22 lvl bars with 10 bars of patrol xp in 70 minutes, fighting at +0/x1/bosses with liberal use of inspirations, no deaths, but plenty of close calls.

MM gained 24 lvl bars with 10 bars of patrol xp in 50 minutes, fighting at +1/x1/bosses with little inspiration use, 2 deaths (Radio's defeat Wyvern Financer mission: last room- Red LB boss and Red Wyvern boss).

Along with the data from Comicsluvr's now-dead thread:
Blaster: lvl1 ->90mins->lvl10->65mins->lvl12->70mins = 225mins for 14lvs
MM: lvl1->120mins->lvl10->66mmins->lvl12->50mins = 236mins for 14lvls

Then again, no one could care anymore: I haven't been watching the forums too closely lately, and to topic seems to have died down since...

I never cared for these performance tests.

Do I think blasters need some help to bring them on par with some other ATs? Yes, especially more so with non-crashing judgement nukes.
Do I think they are unplayable and die all the time? No
Do I think the majority of people that complain/joke about blasters citing the above are incompetent at building/playing blasters? Yes.

I am always interested and continue to read the posts by those who have been making them. I know Fulmens and I have been reporting our progress in THB's thread.

I switched off my scrapper and switched back to my blaster. With SOs I have bumped my difficulty up to +1 / x 2. It is not going well, but I am going to persevere a little to see if it is just that I have not played without IO crutches for so long or if I can't handle that level with this build (maybe I just had a bad day, I made a lot of mental as well as fat finger errors). I do remember I sometimes had trouble on Unyielding for the first few levels after SOs, so it may just be too early to have switched (for me).

I am pretty sure Explosive Blast at 27 (once I get some slots) will also be a boon to the build. Without the +recovery IOs, I am really, really looking forward to 29 and Consume (I imagine from level 26 on I will have major end troubles due to using three AoEs too much). Do we get more inspiration slots at 25, I think so and I hope so, that may really help as well.

At some point I am going to switch to common IOs on both characters. I am guessing that will be ~27 and I will start to slot level 30 IOs.

What was it they used to say? "If you're playing a Blaster and you make any mistakes you die. If you're playing a Blaster, and anyone on the team makes any mistakes, you die."

I don't think "Being better at being a Blaster than at being anything else" really makes up for that.

Let's imagine two towns. Town A has $10 parking tickets and town B has $500 parking tickets. How often do you have to get parking tickets before deciding that town B sucks?

(Also: Blasters in the teens are in their golden years. It's gonna be interesting to see the reports from Blasters in their 30's.)

Okay: as long as the people who didn't care still don't care, and those that cared still do, I'll keep going: I just noticed that the 10+ threads concerning Blaster performance were all simultaneously dying (i.e. almost halfway off the first page)..