What can you do with a problem like a Blaster?

The Ice Tank has a self heal and a variety of tools that a SR scrapper doesn't ( I am assuming you mean Ice/ not an ice melee tank).

I have a Claws/SR brute and an Arch/Dev blaster. The Arch/Dev blaster has the tools to be very safe when fighting things like carnies. The tactics are very simple, pull onto minefields, when minefields don't get the bosses RUN!!!

The claws/sr has inspirations and aid self to fall back on which really isn't that great.

A blaster with decent range and some sort of stealth can usually pull the spawns apart. Even at +4x8 you aren't going to get 4 bosses except from doubled spawns.

If we are pulling, a scrapper with their origin power and some sort of stealth can usually pull spawns apart.

When one says they fight +4/ x8, I never assume pulling. Never.

No, that would be cheating, never mind tedious.

I usually go for +1/x8 on my tank. It's not remotely challenging, but I get bored by the protracted fights if I put the level up higher.

Interesting. You both rule out using tools available in the game. I think I am gaining a better understanding of why the people who worry about changes to blasters are worried.

Why did you rule pulling out for the scrapper? Don't act smug. Anyone can pull, but then you are not really fighting +4 / x8 size spawns. +4 / x (whatever portion of a spawn you get, it might be x8, it might be one guy, it might be something in-between) is not a very useful thing to discuss as the variance is significantly higher than regular spawn to spawn fighting.

This is different from pulling in order to prevent engaging multiple spawns. Keeping yourself to one spawn at a time can likely be a key to survivability if you are already running close to the edge. Pulling one spawn apart just means you are running way past that edge.

Hold it. That was exactly the point.

Arcanavile had the hyperbolic idea that the original poster couldn't fight +4x8 because His/Her SR scrapper would get destroyed by large numbers of bosses hitting. Well you don't get large numbers of bosses from a single +4x8 spawn.

Second, If you are killing the spawn you are killing the spawn. Pulling is no more illegitimate than a sonic putting the spawn to sleep and killing things as they wake up, or my /dev laying a minefield.

Pulling is not fighting x8 spawns. it's fighting 1/3 of a spawn one after another. Any idiot with any AT and build can do that. It is slow, tedious and requires no skill.

You get 3 normally. Any combination of three MIs and DRMs is likely to kill most stuff, especially combined with a bunch of Lts. and minions. Honestly, you are calling getting quickly owned by ONE +4 / x8 Carnie spawn a hyperbolic representation of that situation? That seems more likely to be the 99% scenario.

And often, fighting x8 entails no skill, just a build.

You guys really should get off your high horses.

But it is a discussion point that can be defined and understood. Pulling is a skill, I have seen people do it poorly and others do it well (and there is also an element of luck involved). But it is not a useful point of discussion in this type of topic.

Well you made me look.

Just ran the get shard of serafina radio twice at +4x8 the most I got were 2 MIs and I am fairly certain that was a doubled spawn. I did see a combo of master illusionist and dark ring mistress, really not what we were talking about though.

And yes I do consider it at best hyperbolic and at worst deliberately misleading. SR loses all its armor except the passive resists when fighting MIs, then complaining you are easily killed because you didn't use tactics ? Completely over the top.

BTW are you now arguing that blasters need a buff ? Because if so, I get to say "I TOLD YOU SO"

Your mission is odd. I have several saved carnie missions on various characters. Full spawns are usually 3 bosses. Sometimes 2. Rarely 1.

But SR does not lose all its armor vs. the whole spawn. And we are comparing it to blasters. It is not like blasters have ANY armor to lose vs. MIs. Sure, with IOs they can get Psi defense, but so can SR scrappers. To be honest, I am not sure SR passives include Psi resists (I think they do not, but maybe I am wrong). And your inclusion of pulling as a tactic is something anyone on any AT can do, but once again, it ceases to be a useful discussion point about what a character can survive once we stop actually facing a +4 /x8 spawn and instead pull.

I have not said blasters were on par with other ATs for years (maybe 2006 was the last I had that stance).

I have been recently saying blasters underperform the other ATs, but despite that I am not FOR a buff to the AT. I am not AGAINST one either. I think the game has room for an AT (or 10) that needs team buffs and aggro control to survive. Remember, I am crazy. My odd stance is, "Blasters are weak, keep them that way (or not)."

Here are two examples of outdoor carnie maps. Most of these have 2 bosses, rather than 3, but I consider these maps the odd ones.
+4 / x8 setting

+2 / x7 setting

Carnie Illusionists and MIs fly. They (and CoT Ghosts) fly just high enough in the air to go over mines without triggering them. Carnie Illusionists (both types) also don't detonate mines when phased. All you have to do to make the mines work every time is to hit them with a web grenade when they aren't phased and when they finally phase in over the mines, BOOM.

Even Better, but some here might call that cheating.

It doesn't require skill or a build. Most melee ATs with any build can fight x8 spawns without breaking into a sweat.

That is not true.

I can't consider the use of tactics cheating. I have 14 clubs in my golf bag, I select the best mix for the course I am playing on. If the course has bad sand traps, is it cheating to put a sand wedge in the mix ?

Yeah, I'm with Strato. That's not true. You have to specify what kind of build and what kind of foes, and then maybe it's true. And then you still really need qualify what "without breaking a sweat" means.

It is not cheating to use tactics in game. It is disingenuous in a conversation to claim you can play on a PGA course and do as well as Tiger Woods, but then later state, that you just mean pitch and putt, rather than including driving and approach from the fairway. But that doesn't mean playing pitch and putt is wrong or cheating.

It is fine to pull in game as needed, I do it (although if I have to do it often, I prefer to turn my difficulty down so I don't need to do it much). But when discussing survivability in these forums, stating you can face +4 /x8 spawns generally means you can actually face the whole spawn, not pieces of it.

I am not saying what is right or wrong in game, merely trying to make sure we are all discussing the same thing.

Okay, I will quantify that with - all those I've played, I've never had any problems fighting x8s on melee ATs (which would exclude stalkers, since I've never taken one past level 18) - and I'm no buildmeister and don't consider myself skilful.

So then we get into the question of what does "any build" mean? Does that mean played on x8 using SOs? Against completely arbitrary foes including things like Arachnos, Malta and Longbow?

I'm honestly don't want to ride this into the ground, but it's such a general claim, and honestly so contrary to my own experience (when taken at its full generality), I feel compelled to dig for more clarity.

(How AoE centric your attack set is matters a whole lot, too. +0/x8 is much easier for someone who can readily mow down foes en masse than someone who has to take them, say 1-3 at a time.)

I don't see the comparison at all. The conversation was apparently about capability and had eschewed difficulty. So the claim in golf terms would be "I can complete Augusta from the long tees"

Well that begs the question what is the right thing to focus on. You probably know better than I but do the scrapper challenge rules exclude pulling ?

Yes they do (you can move the spawn, but you can't split it, you can briefly jump behind a wall, but you cannot disengage and return to the fight after healing).

Remember, I am not saying which tactics should be allowed in play, but merely trying to keep clarity on the discussion. Pulling is a viable tactic, but comes at a significant enough speed penalty that I generally wouldn't consider it a normal tactic to be used every spawn (outside of certain trapper situations, but we all know the slowness of trapping is one of their drawbacks, safety at the cost of time).

When someones says they can fight +4 /x8, I believe most everyone believes the discussion is about an entire spawn being engaged.

You are correct that B_L_Angel did not specify how they achieved running Carnie and Malta missions at +4 / x8, but I think that is why Arcanaville was clarifying the difficulty of such a feat. Until otherwise informed, I am going to assume B_L_Angel was not talking about pulling.

It is much less interesting to claim you can finish Augusta from the long tees and then later clarify that you did it with 170 strokes.

I think it's a useless point not because it's 'not soloing an [X] sized spawn' but it's the entire discussion as a whole that has little purpose. Comparing who solos x8 missions is foolish because practically no build can do that without heavy inspiration use, special builds and/or exploiting foe AI with AoE. The level of difficulty to obtain such status is pointless as obtaining it in the first place isn't right.

You've steered the discussion to a dead-end road.

Wrong. Most of my melee characters cannot, only the ones with obscene levels of mitigation and high amounts of AoE. Just because a melee can obtain those things with a specialty build doesn't mean they automatically get them out of the box. They have to work for such things like everyone else (well, everyone except MM perhaps).

Generally speaking though, there are blasters who perform just peachy pulling without slowing down their speed. Because they have that advantage of range. Just because it slows melees down doesn't mean it slows a ranger down.

But this discussion has seemed to veer off from what Blasters actually need to some esoteric comparison to soloing x8 spawns a certain way. I don't know about you but nowhere should anyone expect the devs to give blasters the tools to solo x8 missions...just give them opportunity tools for general play like everyone else gets. That's all.