What can you do with a problem like a Blaster?

I think you're reading FAR more into the 'mirror' comment that there is. I choose the world, so I know what I intended to convey. Most people understood what I intended to convey. You did not. Perhaps I choose the word poorly. I meant, specifically, that the blaster secondary should be reworked to include enough of tools like can be found in the Dominator primary that it can better survive. Just like the Dominator secondaries include enough tools the like of which can be found in blaster primaries so that they can kill... Hope that clarifies my intent enough that you are no longer confused.

Blasters as they currently stand have an attack primary and as a secondary, the have some mezzes/control/soft control and more attacks.

Conversely, Doms as thy currently stand have a Control as a primany and an attack secondary with maybe some soft control.

In theory and play, Doms lock down some (most, all) of the enemy, and then use moderate strength attacks to whittle the enemy down. It works, mostly.

In theory, blasters don the same, but since the mezzes are SO much weaker, they have to rely on killing a lot faster, which they are equipped to do.
In practice, they don't have enough of one or the other, is what I'm hearing. So tehy either need more attacks/damage or more mitigation. I opted for mitigation in my suggestion, and in the form of mezzes since most blasters already have some, it seemed the least drastic a change. And because it's sorta proven method. And mitigation from buffs/debuffs has been done several times before. 3 times using the buff/debuff as the secondary, and never with the mezzes as the secondary. It seemed the most unique option. I never meant it to mean that a blaster would/should get Dom and Troller sets exactly as their new secondaries.

If you just don't like that suggestion on a visceral level, though, that's fair.

One nit-pick, though. The blaster isn't the one unique one. One, it shares it's primaries almost identically with 2 other ATs. Second, while the don't have a strait inversion relationship with another AT like Corrs/Defs do, or Scrappers/Tanks do, etc that still isn't unique. MMs also have no inversion. And they share their primaries with no other at.

It would be mez again.

Pre-level 20 damage modifiers are smoothed out. Most of the ATs do comparatively the same amounts of damage. That additional damage and lower scale mob hit points may be what put the blaster in the sweet spot.

Now add more HP to the mobs in the post 20 game, add in that the blaster is mezzed more often and can't sustain that defiance buff with 3 powers, and increasing the difficulty setting that a blaster is comfortable on makes that worse rather than better. (A dead blaster has a 0 defiance buff)

Spread that out over the time spent playing and the benefit nearly vanishes.

Many of the ranged and melee attacks are the same, and many of the self buffs. The control powers have different names, but they are still control powers, and Gun Drone is very like a Dominator pet (but much weaker).

But if you say "it's not mirrored because the powersets aren't exactly the same" then you have nothing to worry about - increasing blaster control isn't going to change the powersets into Dominator powersets, so they won't be mirrored (by your definition).

In other words, depending on how you define "mirror" either,

1) Blasters and Dominators are already mirrored, and increasing Blaster control won't change that,

or

2) Blasters and Dominators aren't mirrored, and increasing Blaster control won't change that.

...

You are playing City of Heroes, right?

Targeting Drone? I never said anything about Targeting Drone! I said Gun Drone! I did, I swear on Statesman's grave!

Again, then maybe that's a problem of running at an extreme difficulty, rather than the AT. We're also not taking into account things like what powersets or what enemy group.

And your statement sounds an awful lot like "Blasters should be balanced to be able to solo those difficulty settings" which Arcana stated was NOT the case because higher difficulties are NOT the average, nor the standard for balance.

I think the "issues" regarding blasters are being overstated. I'm not denying the issue exists but saying "Blaster can't readily solo extreme difficulties, fix it so they can"?

Mez still pertains to the survivability aspect that I was excluding for this particular line of questioning (and it is a pitfall shared, to some extent, by Controllers, Doms, Defenders, Corrs and Khelds; ie almost all the ranged sets... which would make that point largely non-applicable anyhow)

I think the issue is more like this:

Can other ATs solo at base levels? Yes
Can Blasters solo at base levels? Yes

Can other ATs solo at +2/+6 fairly easily? Yes
Can Blasters solo at +2/+6 fairly easily? And the answer becomes very muddled, but generally is a no.


Another AT running on just SOs is likely to be able to run through content at 0/0 difficulty faster than a blaster, but not that much faster. Either that, or their survivability is much higher, allowing them to have less defeats. Basically, reward/time subtracting for defeats is higher for other ATs. However, this may or may not be within the margin of error.

Also, other ATs running at just SO levels might be able to crank up the difficulty to something higher while still being able to go through at speed equivalent to Blasters doing their missions. So, since they are at higher difficulties, they're getting more rewards/time.


Now, we take some mid-high level builds into account. Other ATs may be able to crank up to +2/+6 without a significant investment, and run those missions at a decent clip. Blasters either need more money into them to perform at that level of difficulty, or for the same investment lag significantly behind in rate of advancement.


So, are people saying that Blasters should be able to run at +2/+6? No. What they're saying is that given roughly the same investment in their build, Blasters should be able to run at +2/+6 at a pace similar to, but not necessarily equal to, other ATs.


If Blasters can run with the other ATs at base levels of difficulty, but start to lag behind significantly at higher levels of difficulty, it MAY point to a problem with the difficulty slider, or it MAY point to a problem with the AT. Given that many other ATs can run fine at that level, including ATs with similar defense levels, it seems to point to their being something wrong with Blasters.

What I said was:

This is not false, this is not mostly false, this is not any false. This was stated by Castle when he was the powers lead, and in the context of knowing this is an operational design rule there is evidence to support the fact that it was one going all the way back to the inception of the game: hints that these things form the basis of the game's balancing appear in the dev diaires written by the dev team in 2002 before launch.


As to teaming, at launch there were far stronger teaming based constraints on balancing, but when the devs declared "everyone must be able to solo within certain limits" those mostly vanished. CoV, which was designed based on the evolved design criteria, wasn't designed around teaming in the classical sense: it was *explicitly* designed around every archetype having equal soloing prowess (this was explicitly stated in CoV beta) and having properties that were intended to make each valuable to teams but not necessary to them. And yes: the problems with stalkers and teams was pointed out and discussed with the devs from almost the first day of beta.

Teaming is now a situational design issue. Archetypes are designed to contribute to teams, but the devs no longer care about making anything particularly necessary to teams - exactly the opposite. And while some content is explicitly designed for teams, the vast majority is designed specifically to be soloed, and team scaling is the secondary design issue. In fact, core content intended to be soloed that can't be soloed by all powersets with reasonable builds is broken by the devs definition. They are compelled to address that. Core content that can be teamed that doesn't scale well to teams is not broken: the devs place a lower priority on addressing that, leaving it up to the players to use difficulty sliders to address that.


No, because the devs aren't perfect, and because no one said the powersets had to be "equal" but rather:

If you still have issues with how the game is designed, I would recommend taking them up with the devs.

We know that blasters had trouble soloing at *any* difficulty level when played by the average player prior to the I11 Defiance changes. That was in spite of the fact that the majority vocal opinion on the forums saying they couldn't see any problems with Blasters. That means those player perceptions were wrong. The end.

Now, if you can't see any problems with Blasters *now*, historical precedent says that anecdote is meaningless. It simply means you can't see them. *If* you have a reasonably comparable level of skill with multiple archetypes, you could *attempt* to observe a variant of the problem by playing at higher difficulty levels. This might help *you* see a problem *you* may have difficulty detecting that affects the playerbase as a whole. Failure to succeed at those higher difficulty levels does not mean Blasters should be buffed until all players are capable of playing at that level. It *suggests* that Blasters might need to be buffed until *you* can play Blasters at comparable difficulty levels to other archetypes, at least up to some limit.

I know that limit isn't +4x8. I know its definitely higher than +1x2. I suggested the range of valid testing was from +0x1 to +2x6 because that was a reasonable limit on the upper bound of TESTING. That does not mean I'm declaring that all Blasters must be able to solo at +2x6 by all players. It means the converse: I don't think any tests higher than +2x6 are meaningful to the standard balancing criteria for the game, even when conducted by expert players. If you can play your scrapper at +3x7 and not your blaster, that difficulty level is outside what I consider to be a meaningful extrapolation point. But I do think if you can play your controller easily at +2x5 and not your blasters, it says *something* about the relative balance between the two, assuming you have comparable skill at both. That's a valid data point, albeit only one and not statistically significant on its own.

We're not taking it into account because it's actually not important to take it into account. Taking it into account doesn't change the outcome. Please, note what I said in my previous posts - I chose my words quite carefully. More powerset combinations can solo successfully on such higher difficulties for other ATs than Blaster combinations. It isn't relevant to my point what particular powersets do and don't solo better, only how many per AT by comparison.

Here's the other part of that - it's a fair question to ask whether those powerset combinations for other ATs are actually gaining something for their reduced ability to solo. In many cases where we're talking about the "support" ATs like Defenders, Corruptors and Controllers, they have weaker soloing because they have powers that only affect allies. So they are weaker alone, but often strong force multipliers for allies. What do Blasters gain in exchange for being comparably weaker soloists?

There's no version of using higher difficulty as a microscope on general performance that cannot be restated that way. You seem to want to focus on the motives for which one would say that, and because you seem to dislike the "me too!" motive, you want to dismiss the methodology. It doesn't work like that. It just so happens that the "me too!" mindset happens to share something with a valid approach to finding and explaining what it is about Blasters that make them historically lag in actual performance and also have increasing abandonment with increasing levels.

Not everyone is saying that. Some people are, because that's a simplistic way of looking at it, and most people don't want to dig into the details. But when we examine why other ATs scale well to higher difficulties and Blasters don't, that's potentially instructive about what Blasters may be missing.

When most other AT combos can run at a given higher difficulty level and most blaster combos can't, that's an issue with the AT.

That's not what I got from Uber's comment at all.

What most folk here are actually saying is "most AT power combos can easily play at difficulty levels most blaster power combos find difficult or impossible".

That's not overstating anything, it's a simple observation.
And it should be addressed.

If I said that a Scrapper can do, plucking an undefended number from the air, 80% of the damage of a Blaster, would that encroach?
Given that the Blaster is 1/6 as survivable or less*?

* Well, unless you have that one Defender around that is always available for team, pays close attention to the Blasters, and never screws up. I think I met her once.

Under current conditions, maybe.

If I said Scrappers have a higher melee damage modifier than Blasters, cheat and use it for their primary and secondary ranged attacks where its equal to the Blaster ranged modifier, and have even higher average base damage due to crits, have the same damage strength cap, have a higher number of AoEs on average, have stronger self damage buffing powers on average, *and* have higher DPA on average by design** on top of having vastly superior damage mitigation on average, would you say its more likely they might encroach on Blaster offense?


** That's actually a design rule involving melee and ranged attacks. And unfortunately, that's not a guess either. It is what I always mean when I say "its not a guess."

Again, I'm only addressing the damage portion of the equation; I am well aware that there are survivability concerns but I could really care less about that for the question at hand.

I would like to know, for sure or not, if (outside of any other metric) all of the damage tweaks that the devs have given other ATs are making Blaster damage as mediocre or poor as some are stating and/or implying. That's it.

I ask because as far as my current testing goes; the Blaster I'm using is consistently accumulating damage buffs that should place it beyond the consistent damage buffs/core damage available to most other ATs.

I need to know if I can approach the topic from both the damage output and survivability perspectives or just the survivability angle.


Thanks.

What is missing from your previous statements was how 'reasonable' was being defined. I see now, in a different post, you have defined it. Previously, it had been alluded to being on the higher end of that scale.
I'll touch on the teaming issue again. I agree with most of what you said. But, due to a very simple fact that this is a MMO, teaming will always be a part of the framework design. They can make every AT able to solo better, which was done. And yes, nothing in particular is needed for teams. Regardless of all of that, teaming as part of a successful MMO has been, and always will be part of the underlying framework. That simply can't be denied. This is a fact, and I don't need a quote to say it is, or isn't the case. I can log into the game and see it for myself.


Exactly, all powersets and ATs are not equal. As they never all should be. There should always be some variation to how they arrive at their goal. That variation could include survivability, damage output, forms and strengths of diverse methods of mitigation, among others I am sure. But, different characters, classes, and archetypes in a game will not perform at the same level. As they should not! I will agree with you, that there should be a baseline performance across the board. It's just a matter of what that is. Even with that baseline, some ATs and powersets will rise above that baseline.


*sigh*

While there is a baseline, there is also an average. Even if everything performs above the baseline, if an AT wanders too far from that average, I expect something will be changed.

Blasters could perform above the minimum expected baseline, but if they perform too far below the average, that will also trigger a change.

So you suggest that if there's a significant gap in performance between the average and the minimum performing ATs that nothing should be done to help the one lagging behind so long as they meet some minimum requirement?

I completely agree with what you are saying here. Personally, I don't need blaster changes, as I am very happy how my old broken down blaster plays. But, I conceded to some changes back on ... eh, the 4th page or so of this thread. Chances are, I'll adapt and be fine with them, who knows maybe I'll like them better. But, there have been some exaggerated claims made in this thread, both on the side of blaster weaknesses. And, on the side of what that fix could or should be. I think whatever this change is, it should remain very close to what the blaster playstyle has been for years now.

The minimum baseline performance level is "must be able to reasonably solo standard difficulty core content missions." That's dev-confirmed.

However, that's just the lower rail of performance. Blasters were not adjusted in I11 because they breached that rail. Rather, they failed a second test, the actual criteria for balanced performance. Every powerset combination for blasters was datamined to determine its average performance, as the devs define performance (the rate at which a player can earn rewards such as XP and drops), for all teaming conditions (including solo) and at all combat level ranges. The data showed that *every* blaster powerset combination underperformed the average of all players combined by more than a critical threshold. That critical threshold represents the size of the bullseye with regard to performance. Any powerset combination that falls outside that range either underperforms or overperforms. Individual achievement is irrelevant to that metric: what any one player can do means nothing. What matters is what all players do on average.

Based on the devs definitions of performance, if Blasters have lower performance than everyone else by a large enough factor, they underperform by definition and must be addressed by design rule. However, its equally true that if all other archetypes improve by enough of an amount except blasters, that will move the average point enough to where once again Blasters will fall outside the acceptable range, and again will be by definition underperforming and require review.

Its the average performance of all players playing all powerset combinations in all archetypes that is the definition of "average performance." Every powerset combination in every archetype must land within a certain distance of that average. NO archetype and NO powerset combination is deliberately designed to be far above average. Many of them appear to be particularly good for players to min/max, but what individual players can do when min/maxing is a side balancing issue, not a core balancing constraint.

The devs basic philosophy is design around the average, and use limits to hem-in the extraordinary.

No, that is not at all what I am saying. What I am saying is the AT should not be 'broken' by turning it into something else after all this time. In other words, no I don't agree with a complete overhaul of the secondaries, I don't agree with turning a blaster into a reverse dominator, I don't agree with having a blaster inherently having the survivability of a melee class. Really, what needs to be done here, would have to be a fresh idea. That would allow blasters to remain blasters. I am speaking for myself, I don't want to lose that style of play.

No, wait.

Next on my list to think about after we see what happens to Blasters. Its a non-trivial problem to just make go away, because its left an enormous footprint on a huge number of powers that can't just all be changed now, and a lot of things have been subsequently balanced around a world where that happens to be true.