My little blaster idea workshop.

Thanks! I'll get to it then. Huge post incoming.

Let's start by assuming for the sake of this post that blasters suck. If I have to debate that point this will get way too long. I'm going to start by identifying what I see as the factors to this. I believe that all three of them need to be addressed in order for blasters to be "fixed".

- Blast sets in general have dated design which results in many powers contributing little to the modern game as well as the sets as a whole underperforming compared to melee and assault sets.
- The blaster archetype in and of itself, as in their power modifiers and inherent, are rather poor.
- Support sets have a very low bar of performance.

Now to move on to my suggested solutions. I'll mark down which problem they're meant to address and give goals along with them. I'll begin with the most contentious one.

1. New Blaster Inherent: Overcharge (isn't this the name of the beam rifle nuke? Should probably be something different)
Effect: Yes, I'm serious. I'm another one of those losers suggesting a different inherent for an archetype. Overcharge is a third bar that regenerates continually and goes down when an attack is used. The blaster receives a damage buff based on how full the bar is, and while the bar is full past a certain threshold the blaster has a certain level of status protection. The UI should have a mark on the bar that clearly shows where this threshold is. Many blaster powers interact with the bar in unique ways (more on that later). Potentially, the bar regenerates at an increased rate while mezzed. The bar begins at zero when the blaster is rezzed.
Goal: Establish blasters as alpha strike specialists that quickly defeat enemies. This is not meant to suggest that they should be poor in sustained fights. The mez protection at high overcharge means that a blaster can not be easily stopped during the crucial first few moments of a fight. If the blaster does get mezzed later on, the regenerating overcharge bar means that they're likely to escape the mez sooner than it would wear off on its own, and when they do escape it they'll have a damage buff.

1a. Snipes have a different effect based on overcharge level
Effect: For non-blasters and for blasters who are not at full overcharge, snipes have no interruptable period. Snipes already have damage proportional to their recharge, so this requires no rebalancing of the powers. When a blaster is at full overcharge the power DOES have an interruptable animation, but has an added effect appropriate for the set it comes from. The added effect should often be a form of mitigation appropriate for the set that hits targets in a small area around the main target, though this wouldn't be appropriate for more offensive sets like fire. For example, energy blast's snipe could be a splash knockdown/back around the target similar to new propel.
Goal: Turn snipes in to attacks that can be placed in attack chains. The added effect specifically happens at full overcharge because that means the blaster is out of combat and the snipe is being used as an initiator. The added effects in general should allow the blaster to safely start fights while solo or on small teams.

1b. Nukes have their endurance crash removed and are usable while mezzed
Effect: Both the recovery debuff and the endurance crash are removed from any tier 9 powers that have them. This may necessitate increasing the initial endurance cost if deemed necessary. Replacing the endurance crash, a less extreme penalty like a damage debuff should be used. On a blaster, the nuke may consume all overcharge but will break free of any mezzes in the process. I'm not completely sure of that last one though.
Goal: Crashing nukes are meant to represent a recognizable comic book staple of the unstoppable force that unleashes all of his power in one gigantic attack and is weakened afterwards. I feel like this is an excellent concept, but that it can be mechanically modeled in a better way. Being able to use the nuke while mezzed helps increase its viability as an emergency power. The power breaking mez is conceptually appropriate and fun, as the user blasts through whatever was holding them. I'm still not sure about what extra cost the power should have once used. I feel like a lasting penalty is appropriate for the power's theme, and that it should be at a sweet spot where it's strong enough to be noticeable but not so much that it discourages future use. I'm not sure what that lasting penalty should be though.

1c. Build up restores overcharge by a certain amount.
Effect: Does what it says on the tin. The damage buff of the power would likely be reduced to compensate, though it should continue to act at full power if used at full overcharge so that it's still a viable power for increasing your alpha strike damage. Targeting drone from devices would instead give a buff to overcharge regeneration, an effect that would not suppress while mezzed.
Goal: Increase integration with the overcharge mechanic. My biggest hesitation about this is that people may try to use this to gain overcharge's status protection and be disappointed when they don't gain enough overcharge to reach the threshold or if the mez is too strong for them it to overcome, which would be really disappointing.

2. Update blast sets to new attack set design standards
Effect: Too numerous to list here.
Goal: I've been working on a big post about rebalancing blast sets in the same style as the buff/debuff set rebalancing post I made a few months back. That's outside of the scope of this post though. I'll just put down the quick note that single target status effects need to have competitive damage attached to them. This is a design paradigm that has been applied to a few attack sets already, and I feel it would be especially helpful to blasters as it would allow them to be able to mitigate damage without sacrificing offense.

3. Improve blaster modifiers to resistance, defense, and debuffs
Effect: Defense and resistance scale 0.075, which is the same used by scrappers and corruptors I believe. Tohit, damage, and defense debuff scale 0.09. For reference, corruptors are 0.1 and defenders are 0.125.
Goal: Improve the effect blasters get from their ancillary shields. This isn't a huge buff as blasters are currently at 0.070 scale, but I have trouble justifying values for them above scrappers. Improvements to blaster debuff values are very important as debuffs are an integral part of many blast sets. For those who are reading all of this, here's a thank you gift. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc. Blasters are currently at 0.07 scale for debuffs, so this would be a significant boost which I consider necessary as blasters currently get very little from blast debuffs which hampers the variety of sets they can choose without gimping themselves.

4. Remove the design paradigm of tier 1 blasts having an animation time of 1 second and tier 2 blasts having an animation time of 1.67 seconds
Effect: Return blaster animations to their previous states (which corruptors and defenders still use) and allow future sets to have animation times determined in more appropriate ways.
Goal: The blast time standardization was done as a result of defiance 2.0. Since the blasts were usable while mezzed, the developers were very worried about some blast sets benefiting from this more than others. I'm suggesting using a different inherent though, which removes the need for this. Even beyond that, this change would benefit sets both mechanically (1.67 animation time isn't that great for an attack that recharges in 6-8 seconds, and blasters don't have many choices for single target attacks) and conceptually (the standardization really cuts down on the uniqueness of sets).

5. Massively overhaul and improve support sets. Allow them to specialize in personal mitigation, control, or debuffs where appropriate.
Effect: The minutia of this is too much to get in to without making a post dedicated specifically to it. I'm talking about things like making taser an area control, replacing a power in dark manipulation with siphon life, and making ice patch a ranged power with respectable area (more similar to ice control's ice slick basically). To put it succinctly, make them lesser versions of defense, control, or debuff sets.
Goal: Give blasters effective tools for dealing with enemies while simultaneously increasing the uniqueness of the sets. Considering the state that manipulation sets are currently in, I consider replacing powers with different powers, ignoring the cottage rule, and getting the animation team involved in new powers to NOT be out of the question.



Conclusion: The end result of all of these things when put together is that we end up with blasters that are much stronger when initiating fights thanks to a damage buff and mez protection for a time. Improved secondaries and the special effect on snipes help in this area as well for certain sets. Beyond their abilities in dominating the "alpha strike" portion of a fight, they have respectable general survivability thanks to improved values on their defenses and debuffs, though improved secondaries contribute to this the most. The changes to snipes, single target status effects, and other things I couldn't include in this post result in blasters being much more competitive with melee and assault damage sets. The number of viable blaster sets increases as well, as the gap between the damage of the lower sets and the higher sets becomes much less wide and the defensive contribution of sets becomes a much more important metric.

Although if you try to do that all in one issue the end result might be that you kill the powers team.

I was thinking along the lines of Shock and Awe. The first AoE the blaster launches (ie: while not supressed) locks every thing down for 5-10 seconds. (Holy crap! What was that! Duck! BLASTER! Run Away!)

While every thing is in a panic it can't move or respond BUT....

They would have to change the way the alpha response works against blasters to make it useful. The mobs would have to notify AFTER the initial mez and damage hit or it wouldn't do anything to help.

Seven reworked secondaries, a new inherent, and twelve tweaked primaries in one issue? Sacrifices must be made in the name of justice. They will etch their names in to the blaster archetype with their own blood. We will honor them as those who saved us from the sins of game designers past.

I tried suggesting a "Struggle" mechanic before. While mezzed, the two primary blasts that we're allowed to use would grant 2 points of mez protection for 20 seconds when used and the secondary power would grant 0.5 points. Using these powers would allow the Blaster to shrug off a mez in the couple of seconds it takes to cycle the attacks to have enough mez protection and return to the fight.

No thanks, 4 seconds is way too long.

They could increase damage on blasts where they can't lower animation times as an acceptable "fix"

I don't mind sacrificing the lives of the powers team to get a well-done revamp of blasters, but then there would be no one left to take a closer look at teamed tanker mechanics and peacebringer power synergy in I25, and I don't think the sound effects team is up for the challenge.

I had an even worse typo in there before I fixed it...

I see your point. We need to at least keep Arbiter Hawk so we can sacrifice him to peacebringers. I'll begin the procedure to have him canonized posthumously.

Well, yes and no. Reasonable guesswork can take you quite far actually. The devs are usually safe to drop hints because players tend to go all-out epileptic trees on them rather than reaching the more reasonable conclusions. Otherwise, the powers that be would probably have us all hanging by our feet by now.

Not entirely, his other posts implied that the changes (whatever they are) fall into four main categories.

With that in mind here are my guesses/hopes:

1. Change to damage formula to account for activation time (possibly with further changes to snipes)

2. Increased mez protection for Blasters of some sort (Defiance 3.0)

3. Increase Blaster base durations for mez powers and/or increase base mez durations for powers in Blast and Manipulation sets for Blasters/Defenders/Corruptors.

4. Devices revamp (I can dream)

Might be rather gamable though.

But I like the meat of the idea of a reverse Burn-Out effect because it can be a form of mez protection if you think about it. Whatever causes the shock and awe effect would basically shut down any toggles they're running, any mezzes they were gonna use or were about to use again because they're almost recharge starts recharging back at base, a slew of nasty effects like a Master Illusionist summoning a hoard of Lt illusionist will suddenly be unable to if the Blaster or Stalker hits them hard enough.

Zog.

I never claimed that they were realistic guesses, after all those epileptic trees have to start somewhere .

I never stated what Zog meant either.

Since they launch the alpha as soon as they notify that only solves the problem of on going damage.

I think someone else mentioned it before in another thread but I'm also thinking a potential solution might be to grant the blaster mag 1 mez protection and 2% ranged defense for each primary and secondary power that is recharged and ready to use.

That would allow us to take all of our primary and secondary powers (even if we didn't use or even slot them all, since we won't because they don't animate fast enough) instead of the pool powers that most blasters dip into to make up for the mitigation the blaster lacks.

Touche.

While I like the spirit of the idea, I don't think it is necessarily a good idea to incentivize power choice in that particular way. There is nothing wrong with a build that only takes 10-13 powers from their primary and secondary, IMO.

If the powers are bad, they should be improved, and not by adding a gimmick that encourages taking a power just to get a passive bonus that is not actually tied to the power.

Crashless nukes without much better recharge wouldn't do much. They are a panic button that needs to be pressed before you are worried. I know I personally don't take them because their contribution to damage over time is very low the crash is just an extra nail in their coffin

Unless there are a lot of Absorb effects coming in so it is an alternate form of regeneration I don't think it will scale well, and ultimately fail to keep blasters on pace with other ATs.

Taking powers simply to slot passive IO bonuses is pretty common for most IO builds (a practice that I eschew but I know that a lot of forumites do that)

Changing that requires coding time that may not be available. Additionally, except for flavor, I'd say there is something wrong with not being able or willing to take most of your primary/secondary powers. That indicates that there is a design problem if pool powers (which by definition are supposed to be inferior to primary and secondary powers) are taken instead by a majority of players.

That would suggest that the blaster primary and secondary powers are inferior to pools in some (or multiple) way(s) an "upside down" situation that should be remedied.

Don't forget blighted and benighted dual pistols as well.....