Blasters and mez - Are we going about it wrong?

I wonder if we are approaching the blaster being mezzed problem from the wrong angle.

We know that scrappers are near us for damage output and they blow us out of the water for mez protection and survivability.

What if we look at it from a reverse gate angle?

Defense gates in any where from 50% of incoming damage to 5% of incoming damage (no defense to soft cap to all positions).

Resistance gates in anywhere from 100% of all incoming damage to 25% of all incoming damage (0% resistance to 75% resistance [the blaster resistance cap] to all types)

There is no hope of a blaster maxing out all possible types of defense and resistance but lets leave all that aside and ask the question......

How much of our outgoing damage does mez gate out and does the number that remains truly leave us ahead of scrappers in terms of damage output?

My own characters show that my blasters suffer any where from twice to 3 times as much time spent mezzed as any other AT that I play. Leaving aside defeats due to mez and the potential that a large portion of my scrapper mez time may be from stun after using a wakie what can this number tell us?

My most mezzed blaster spent 1.31% of online hours mezzed. My least spent .26% and the average blaster was .5%.

My mez protected melee toons came in at roughly 1/10 the amount of time spent mezzed in comparision

For my most mezzed blaster I spent ~.75 minutes in every logged hour mezzed.

The question then becomes how much of that online time is in actual combat? If I average 1 minute of travel for 5 minutes of mission time (I think that may be close to actual). That would mean that the above blaster spent 2.5% of my in combat time mezzed and unable to act.

Except I usually play about 60 minutes in a sitting (unless doing task forces) and I spend the last 5 minutes cleaning up and selling/buying items so we can easily drop that 40 combat minutes per hour to 35 combat minutes per hour.

There are other things to consider. How much time did I spend respecing? Modifying costumes? Zoning? Resting? Sizing up the battlefield before attacking? Returning from the hospital? Buying more break frees when I ran out?

If all those things added together get my in combat time down to a 15 combat minutes of every 60 minutes logged on (a number I think that I could believe) the difference between blaster damage output vs scrapper damage output due to being mezzed becomes staggering.

If that is a fair estimate that means that the blaster spent ~12% of in combat time mezzed compared to the scrapper's 1ish%.

To make matters worse though I am reasonably certain that the scrapper spent more than 15 minutes of 60 in combat. The scrapper was defeated less often which meant fewer return trips from the hospital. The scrapper rarely has to stop to buy more inspirations between missions. The scrapper need not size up the battle field before running in. The scrapper spends less time resting to regain health and the scrapper regenerates faster due to having a higher hit point total. The scrapper also benefits more from layered defenses and resistances since they have a higher base to start with.

Does any one care to calculate a comparison? What are the chances that our true damage output per combat unit time, compared to scrappers, puts us around corruptor or even defender numbers? How much of a damage boost would blasters need to get to parity in that case? Is that a reasonable number in terms of game mechanics?

Anyone care to speculate?

Two things...

1. What do you mean by "gates"?

2. You are going to be getting mez help from Hybrid. You also get it from Clarion.

I'm not sure what you are doing but my blaster doesn't have problems staying alive so long as I am willing to play smart and not trying to expect myself to survive the same things that a Scrapper can.

What is the blaster supposed to do about mez when he/she is NOT yet an Incarnate?

I get a bit annoyed when folks suggest the solution to being mezzed will eventually be solved once the blaster is 50+ and then takes one specific Incarnate power.

Interesting thought problem, Miladys.

Clearly we're supposed to get PL'd through the first 49 levels, Ad Astra, and never exemplar.

To be honest, it is hard to make an argument against what you all want... because what you want isn't what Blasters need. Blasters do not need and should never get Mez protection of their own. It would throw off the balance in ways that you couldn't imagine.

Also, TBH, I've never felt that my blasters need mez protection. What I'd prefer is for the devs to boost their base DPS and make the secondary powers a little more useful.

Giving them mez protection would not throw the balance off because when it comes down to it a Blaster can't take a hit. Plus we have lvl 50 blasters running around with Clarion perma and I have yet to see the servers catch fire and then explode :P.

I'm definitely not convinced the Blaster should get mez protection help.
I actually very much like the current aspect of Defiance.

However, I've long wondered if the Blaster should have more hit points.

I am not a numbers person. It's just always struck me as odd when the wimp gets NO defense AND so much less HPs.
I am not saying that this is the answer or even AN answer... it's just something I've wondered about (very likely someone could point out why this would be very bad).
Give us Blasters a little more of a chance to survive the beatings they will take.

It seems true that the amount of damage increase Blasters would need (to balance the lack of defenses compared to the damage output the well-protected ATs can deliver) would be quite ridiculously high.
So, maybe some damage increases (including many of the things people have suggested for a while now... Snipes possibly working like Stalker's Assassin Strikes - long snipe or normalized heavy hitter plus nuke improvements [either bigger and badder or crashless]) plus a bit more beef on the bones via Hit Points... Would that be good? Bad?

Blaster need more damage output

I wish Blasters would stop acting like they are the only AT that has to deal with mez..Corruptors, Defenders, Masterminds, Controllers depending on power choices all deal with mez...

They are not giving blasters mez protection.. they havent gotten it in EIGHT YEARS.. they aint gonna get it now..

Play smarter.. learn your enemies.. learn who mezzes and how.. Develop techniques to deal with mezzers.. Mez them FIRST.. Stun em.. Hold em.. knock them down.. Take them down before they take you down..

I have no issue with status resistance either or a click power like Domination or The Hybrid Toggle that gives blasters a window of status resistance or protection.

Just throwing more damage at the AT seems like an unlikely move from the Devs and it wouldn't solve all of their problems.

Ranged Damage modifier I believe should increase some.

ED really affected Blasters badly.. You used to slot one accuracy and 5 damage. ED killed that and never balanced Blasters damage. This affected Snipes GREATLY.. Snipes need to fixed BADLY !!!

I think complaining about mez protection is a non-issue. Everyone likes to conveniently forget that Blasters do have a mechanic that addresses the mez issue: They're the only AT that can attack while mezzed. That alone has saved my butt on numerous occasions. Break Frees took care of the rest.

Clearly, Blasters have fallen behind as every other AT has gradually had their damage buffed around them. They definitely need to have their damage raised a bit though to put them back at the top, especially considering what they sacrifice for DPS.

I do like the idea of raising their health and possibly giving them better ranged damage mods as well. It's worth considering.

Re range vs. melee "tankmages": I have relearned from the Blaster experiment that it's a lot easier to get ten people into Energy Torrent than five into Shadow Maul. Blasters can hurt more people, more. I have also relearned that it doesn't make up for being six times more delicate. (From my Force Field days, I can promise you that a Blaster without the fear of death does a HELL of a lot of damage.)

Re "ED" and other pieces of the good old days: we can get close to one SO of damage from new Defiance, and we have the damage cap to actually USE all of BU + Aim + slotted damage now. Used to cap at 400% instead of 500%. Also they HAVE increased Blaster HP once. And I believe they increased the ranged damage modifier to 1.125 from 1.0, but I could be wrong about that. Blasters aren't all that far behind issue 4 damage; they just lost the issue 4 ability to hit 200 critters at once with that damage.

Re mez protection: They added knockdown to CoT crossbows. It was good, that day, that I didn't live near the studios. The amount of mez in this game is utterly stupid. And 90% of the blasters, for 90% of their careers, duck less than 30% of the incoming mez. "It gets better"- bull. Before a blaster gets any meaningful safety from mez, it is given to half the minions AT RANGE. And unless you're playing the "Skip the first 49" plan... you have to survive level 49 to get to level 50.

Mez is something that Defenders and Corruptors have to deal with, in the sense that a small percent of the attacks with mez may land on them. It's something Blasters have to deal with, in the sense that every punk with a swordgun has a chance of mezzing them every shot. Every minion in Crey power armor, half the Malta... freaking level 25, you can get stuck in a slugfest with a CoT boss and have no escape. It's straightup "who runs out of HP fastest" and that's no way for a Blaster to win a fight.

Edited: "No escape"? Well, what about Break Frees? I'm sorry, I used most of my limited stock of inspirations to try and cover the lack of Defense and the lack of combat heals. I ran out of Break Frees in fight #6 and I forgot to put ten in gleemail. How many inspirations does your Scrapper use in a fight?

Great post Fulmens!