Blasters and mez - Are we going about it wrong?

This is why moving around is important even for tanks. I like to use the term wiggle. Wiggling around in a spawn is a great way to help convince enemies to move towards you as well as helps ensure you tag more enemies with damage and taunt effects.

Corruptor secondaries are very dissimilar as well, yet they function to support their primary blast powers. Their isn't a blatant difference in range damage output between Blaster/Corruptor primaries, which tells me the secondary is what really makes the difference. So I respectfully disagree, and that there is something specifically missing from Blaster secondaries.

If it means doing it right, and not just putting a band-aid over a gashing wound, I would be all for waiting.

To me, it represents the problem with Blaster secondaries. Lots of the powers just aren't worth picking up.

Adding multiple powers choices per tier wouldn't seem that difficult. Just need to decide what other powers they would have access to, and in what tier to place them in. Maybe it would take longer than I'm thinking, I don't know. I'm more than positive you have a much better understanding than me of how something like that would take time wise.

I've considered suggesting making completely new secondary powersets that are better balanced (for example, fiery support to go alongside fiery manipulation) but that only solves the problem of moving player cheese. It has about as much chance of happening as an overhaul of current manipulation sets, if not less, since it involves more work.

Ok, I only found this tread yesterday and am trying to catch up, but I just had to reply to this. Why? Because it is utter nonsense.

A blaster can't function without the fight pool? What utter rubish. My first 3 toons to 50 were blasters. All 3 of them did a good portion of getting there soloing. How many of them took the fight pool? None. well, ok, once inherant fitness was released (well, when I was able to play again after inherant fitness) I respeced my main, Neo-Chamber, into the fight pool, but that is a very recent thing for me. Yes, I'll admit he has better survivability now than before, but I didn't have that much of a problem before. My second 50 on the other hand, Tess Trueshot doesn't, and never will, as I have far bigger priorities in her build. She solo'ed most of her journey to 50, taking out EB's with impunity along the way. Yes, she can go down much quicker if anything gets into melee range, but she is more capable, for the most part, of making sure things are dead before they can.

As for your Eden trial example, Well, Neo is my badging toon. Ge took part in the eden trial long before inherant fitness and thus having the fight pool, and guess how many times he died on that trial..... Not once. I dealt a large portion of the damage to take out both the mold wall and crystal titan AV's no problem. And no, I wasn't relying on my team mates to carry me, I was more than capable of looking after myself thank you very much.

As to the whole mez debate. I don't see what the fuss is really. I've been playing Neo for 4 years, and am still struggling to get the 12 hour mez badge for his collection, and rarely feel the need for break frees. and without the aid of acrobatics. I respeced out of that long ago as I couldn't justify the end cost. I won't deny it's usefulness, but it doesn't fit every build and should not be hammered into any build if something else is going to suffer because of it. Clarion? Pffff, Barrier for Neo, and Tess. Both offer much more to thie builds than Clarion does. After all, an attack that doesn't hit can't mez.

Do I feel blasters need something? Yes, certainly. Dispite how much I love my blasters, I see how much of an easier time all the other AT's I play have in just about every situation. I don't know what that help would be though. A buff to damage? Maybe, blasters are supposed to be the damage kings after all, but I know that could be hard in balancing so as not to trivialize the game for any blaster. Maybe a reduction in end costs and recharge times so as to raise blasters DPS rather than DPA, but still, could be tricky balancing. I do like Arcanavilles mez pulse suggestion, and like someone else pointed out, that's kinda like what KB is for energy blasters. More HP could be useful, after all, even with tanker HP, the blaster is stil gonna be super squishie with no in built defences. But I doubt that will ever happen.

In short, I don't know what the solution is. Blasters, for me as a blaster player at least, should be about walking the line of life and death with every encounter. Blaster should purely be about killing them before they kill you. Blaster should be at the top of the damage table, not halway up and at the bottom of the survivability table. There in lies the fun, for me at least, in playing a blaster. But as is now, that isn't the case. We are far from the top but still the squishiest, so have to add in defences to make up for our lack of offence.

Originally Posted by Forbin_Project Then it's time for them to get off the cross, use the wood to build a bridge, and get over it.

I used to think that mez was the big problem for blasters. But I actually checked and it really wasn't that bad when compared to other ATs. If you remember when Fire/Kins were the giant farmer, they weren't farming maps with mez heavy enemies.

I think the perception that mez is the big problem, comes from the fact that it is a slow and annoying way to die. When it happens it is much more memorable than a quick stabbing.

Correlation isn't even linkage without a mechanism. The act of saying look 90% of the time I get a phone call, its when I am on the toilet is the only linkage between the two events and its an imaginary connection.

But that's farming, an activity that is heavily dependent on cherry-picking fights. Fire/Kins trollers would likely farm enemies with simply because they were lower risk, not because they had to. Part of the goal of any farmer is to maximize kill speed at the same time you minimize risks.

Farmers are also skilled players, above average. What about the soloist that simply wants to go through story arcs at his own speed? I like my blaster in teams but I really don't solo any story content with them because (at least the first run) I never know how frustrating of an experience it will be.

Mez is not the only issue, some form of survivability boost would be heavily appreciated (can’t see many ways to add this without restructuring the Ancilary sets to be broader and earlier.)

But I feel mez is a huge issue, even if it's not the biggest. Perhaps I think this because I can get a healing power from power pools, and I can get a smash/res toggle from power pools, in addition to def, and I can get more resistance from epics... not to mention IO def bonuses (not available to free players) but I can’t get mez protection anywhere.

Hmmm... you know just crossed my mind... if they simply increased blaster resist/def modifiers, I would be VERY happy. Same with mez modifiers, at least to a point where Presence/Fear becomes useful for blasters.
Heck, maybe if they added a 5th power to Fighting that granted Mez Protection, I’d be happy! At some point I disliked the idea of Pool powers addressing AT issues (since they overkill the issue by also helping other ATs) but my stance on that has changed a lot since the introduction of IOs, not to mention Incarnate abilities.