My little blaster idea workshop.

So blasters *will* be seeing some changes. How? We don't exactly know yet. The way I figure it, more ideas to look at is always better.

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Defiance 3.0 In addition to the current mechanics defiance now grants the user a +defense to range and AoE attacks. Each attack also gives an additional small buff to said defensive types and mez resistance (of some significant value). Once a foe enters say a 5 foot radius of the blaster, that defense disappears and turns into a scaling resistance buff (Similar to Melee Hybrid) along with scaling mez protection that caps out at say mag 6.

Both Melee and ranged playstyles are rewarded but in different ways. Blasters get "Defiant" about things based on their playstyle.

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Snipes - Elemental, Energy and Beam rifle snipes (someone else can figure out something for AR/Archery) Snipes have a 1.67 second cast and deal high damage at long range. If the caster remains rooted, the target takes extreme DoT for upwards of 5 seconds similar to an interruptable channeled ability. Each second/tic costs additional end but yeah, extreme damage. Would require animation tweaking, easiest for something like fire blast's snipe.

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Aim/BU mechanics - Making blasters more interesting.

Fire - Aim : During the duration of Aim, attacks have a fiery embrace still chunk of damage added to them.
Build up : Melt Armor - During the duration, attacks have a - Res component attached to them that can cap out at 5 stacks.

Energy - Aim : Impact - Foes knocked back while aim is up take additional chunks of damage.
Build up - Each attack adds a 25% damage buff for 10 seconds in addition to the 100% base.

Dark - Aim : Drain Life - Each attack adds an additional DoT similar to interface, chance for negative energy, chance for -max HP
Soul Drain : Spirit Leech - For the 30 second duration, caster gains an aura that siphons additional damage off of defeated foes. 3% per minion, 10% per LT and 25% per boss.

Ice - Aim : Ice shards - Adds an "Icey Orb" effect to ST attacks that shatters and releases a small PBAoE of Cold/Lethal damage. AoE's have a chance to immob the target.
Build up : Deep Freeze - Attacks gain a chance to mini crit for 25% of their damage as well as incasing the target in ice for 3 seconds.

Electric - Aim : Arc lightning - Attacks gain a "Chain induction" style jump.
Build up - Tesla Coil - Attackers within a 10 foot radius have a chance to be stuck with moderate energy damage, each strike generates a charge, every three charges the next attack deals a 50% crit for ST attacks, 15% for AoE's

Psychic - Aim : Psychic backlash - Reduces targets (Boss and below) resistance to psy damage to 0% attacks gain a double hit of psy damage. For EB's AV's and GM's -30% res.
Build up - Psychic Echoes - All attacks have a 25% chance to "Double cast" an echo of the attack that deals 50% damage.

Beam Rifle - Aim : Plasma Cell - Adds an Energy orb to all ST attacks that explodes in a small PBAoE around the target, AoE's add high energy DoT during the duration.

Archery - Aim : Deadeye - All attacks gain a chance to minicrit for 25% damage.

Sonic - Aim : Resonant Frequency - Attacks gain scourge effect that is based on the stacks of sonic's -res.

Radiation - Aim : Meltdown - Attacks add a DoT to the target, each follow up attack on the target increases the strength of the DoT for the duration of Aim.

Devices - Cloaking Device - While hidden, gain a 100% damage buff and 50% chance for full crit on ST attacks, AoE's have a 25% chance for 50% crit. While not hidden 5% chance for 25% minicrit.

May add something for AR and Dual pistols later, just some idea's that would make blaster's burst powers much more interesting.

Let me suggest that if the devs are looking at Blasters, and have proceeded far enough along in their ideas that Synapse is actually hinting they've been playtesting them a bit, then players should be thinking in terms of flexible ideas that could be integrated with whatever the devs are thinking.

I can already tell you what will happen. At some point the devs will release a bunch of changes to beta for us to test. No matter what amazing idea any of us has for blaster changes, the devs will say "great idea, now please test ours." Their idea may be great, it may be bad, or it may be incomplete. It most likely will require some adjustments of some kind. The devs tend to like suggestions of the form "lets keep that, but lets add this to make it better" and tend to frown upon ideas like "that's ok, but here's my totally different idea that has nothing to do with yours: do mine and you can do yours also if you insist, devs."

Think in terms of what blasters need, what their specific pros and cons are, what their different playstyles are for different players. Think about which powers seem to have issues, and which you'd leave alone. But most of all, think in terms of general principles that could mesh with whatever the devs have come up with. If the devs figure out a way to make us more survivable, will it be in the right ways? What tests would you conduct to test survivability, and what deficit does each test suggest about a specific weakness about blasters. Suppose they make us more survivable by giving us a new power. Can we activate that power quickly enough, often enough, and at the right times? If they make our offense higher does it increase offense in the right way? Does it increase the gap between the high and low blasters, or does it reduce that gap?

We have hover blasters and blappers and all sorts of other blasters. No change will be perfect and help everyone perfectly equally and well. But what would you expect the change to do, and what do you hope it doesn't do, to all those players in general?

In other words, whatever you think you want, start thinking about the most flexible ways to get it, so that you can react to whatever the devs do. That's Arcana's Getting What You Want From the Devs rule #8.


I'm just tossing this out there; I'm not a dev, don't represent the devs, and don't speak for the devs. Having said that, my recommendations at this point in the brainstorming process is, for what its worth:

1. Avoid suggestions that require animation changes.

2. Avoid suggestions that require specific hand-tweaking of every single blaster powerset.

3. Avoid suggestions that require major tech (code) changes.

4. Focus on changes that would have the greatest impact on solo blasters operating between +0x1 and +2x5 and teamed blasters in all normal teaming situations.

5. Focus on changes that make small changes to offense and moderate changes to survivability.

6. Focus on changes that would be relatively easy to describe to new players.

7. Consider changes that have high gameplay benefits over and above pure numerical ones.

8. Think about Blasters' closest cousins: Dominators and Stalkers.

Great suggestions, Arcanaville. Without sounding like I work for NCSoft (I don't), I would say that if we want to beta test these changes and have input, we have to be able to get on the beta server, and that pretty much means you have to be a VIP.

Workshop thread? Does this mean I can put my extremist blaster changes here or would it be better to leave this as Liberty's thread?

As Adeon points out, that doesn't take into account inspiration use. The faster you kill stuff the faster you get insps and the more they stack. I run the AE "farm" thing all the time, when you use insps aggressively, you get more insps faster which can push you even faster.

The first blaster in your example can better leverage limited duration buffs like the hybrid slot and can better choose to fire off a BU or Aim when a fight starts. (Gotta get the first good shot in)

Is more damage the best solution? Not really, but is much easier to sell that to the playerbase than a global damage nerf. It not that blasters do not enough damage, its other ATs do too much.

As far as what I think the devs will do, short of speeding up animation times, would be to buff damage. We'll just have to disagree on the point Adeon.

We'll just have to see what appears on beta.

Arcanaville: Extra damage may not increase survivability per unit time. There are exceptions where you get to the next "step" (e.g. one-shotting minions, or two-shotting with AOEs where you start the second before the first lands.) But if we take your example as valid, I agree: it does not increase survivability per unit of time.

But, again using your example, it doubles the survivability PER UNIT OF XP. You spend less time in debt, you do more progressing between deaths, and I imagine you experience less frustration.