Blaster Fixes: Survivability Side

There are a lot of threads that get bogged down in a lot of discussion of how much damage, relatively, Blasters do compared to other AT's. Is it 10% more than Scrappers? 20% more? How much, and how much should it be?

Everyone agrees, pretty much, that it isn't a good trade for 20% the survivability. (I'll go through that number in a minute.)

The reason for this thread is to discuss how much more survivability is needed to give Blasters something close to a level playing field, and how do we get it to them?

I phrased that carefully. A lot of people have said things in these discussions like "Blasters just die, get over it." Or "My blaster is fine." Or "ur doin it rong".

Blasters shouldn't accept a distant last place in survivability in return for a damage benefit that's small enough to argue about- they shouldn't accept a distant last place in survivability PERIOD.

Someone has to be last. I recognize that. It's going to be Blasters. I recognize THAT. But the gap shouldn't be so ludicrous.

Talking about L50, with several Incarnate powers, is not the point. Talking about builds that a specific primary/secondary combination can pull off (elec/en endurance drain, or ice/ice "survive the alpha, survive the fight" combos, or whatever) is not the point. Talking about builds that require IO access, eleven specific powers, and 46 slots, or whatever the "capped range" numbers are, is not the point.

The POINT is that a median Blaster using SOs and a median Scrapper using SOs are not even close.

I did a quick calculation and a level 32 SR scrapper is about four times tougher than a level 32 Blaster with a REALLY conservative build for the Scrapper.

How much tougher is a typical Defender? They have to give up a lot of offense AND they have to take a lot of time setting toggles and whatnot, but for Rad, Darkness and Storm I could easily make a case for factor-of-four. Maybe a factor of ten.

How much tougher should Blasters be, and how should we get there? I think a factor of two is not unreasonable; and if the technique we use to get there gives a few loopholes that make killer builds possible, I don't think that's a bad thing.

We haven't had a Blaster FOTM since they fixed a POWER OF TEN bug in August 2004, when the game was four months old. It's not something I'm afraid of.

I'm going to start out by suggesting- based on a cut-down Crab Spider- 25% Resistance and 10% Defense to all, on all the time, scaling up in the first 20 levels and built into the inherent. This is separate from any mez protection fix; I think that's a discussion for a different thread.

Surely someone out there can do better than ME.

Reverse invincibility inherent - blasters start with high defense and resistance, but the more enemies surrounding them the lower their defenses and resistance go, until at some number of enemies, let's say 5 or 6, their inherent defense and resistance is zero.

Build Up and/or Aim: You charge yourself with energy and get half your HP worth of HP in the form of "Absorb" mechanic for 30 seconds or till you lose it. [On top of the +to hit / +dam it already gives.]

Leaving mez aside lots of ideas, pick one (or a couple):

1. Tier 1 secondary (all secondary sets) give it a 10 foot radius and a 5 target per cast cap. (Yes, Power Thrust too).
2. Give all secondary powers that apply a status effect a 10 foot radius and a 5 target per cast cap.
3. Give all blaster powers that apply a status effect but do minimal or no damage, the damage that would be appropriate for the recharge and endurance cost.
4. Add 15% ranged defense to the Epic resistance shields and to Frozen Armor.
5. Make the Epic Pool available for blasters ONLY at level 4 just like all the other pools.
6. Hero side PPPs so that you can do a mission for say Posi or War Witch like you do on Red side and unlock a Hero PPP that addresses blaster issues. (It really sucks to have to go red side to get Mace Mastery and then have to come back again).
7. Add a row and a column to the inspiration tray FOR BLASTERS ONLY.
8. Add powers to all the Blaster (but not Defender or Corruptor) primary and secondary sets. It could be done like the pool powers are. The additional powers would open up at the same level and you could choose either one. Don't like or want the power that opens up the next time you get a power? You can go back and pick one of the earlier ones up instead (they won't lock out). This could allow the devs to add AoE damage to the sets that don't have much, Build up to /devices, Aim to DP/ and AR/, status effecting powers to Fire/ and /Fire etc.
9. Add additional thematic secondary effects to Blasters: Fire would get some -to hit (soot and smoke), Ice would get -def and -res (freezing shrinks metal armor and creates gaps, damage while frozen cracks it), Sonic could get bonus damage (vibration), Energy/ could get chance to stun, /Energy could get chance for KB, etc.
10. The Blaster is deadly at 40' and less. Make the MoB AI reflect that. Make the mobs reluctant to close with the blaster so that having a MoB close to melee is an uncommon occurrence instead of the usual PVE melee gank fest.
11. Remove rooting from all blaster powers so that instead of stick and move you can move while sticking. (This could also allow the blaster to not be locked out of activating powers while KB'd which would be both cool and comic book thematic).
12. Remove movement suppression for BLASTERS ONLY.
13. Remove (or reduce) the effects of ED for blasters.
14. Remove interrupt from all powers that blasters can take. (ie: fix snipes, /devices, and aid self)
15. Create a "blaster" pool. This would have 5 powers that address the most common blaster issues. It unlocks at level 4 and isn't available for any other AT.
16. Allow the blaster to select a 5th Power Pool.

The whole point of blasters is to be ranged damage, it's in the description and name of the AT. Maybe they can buff the melee range abilities in addition to make the risk more sensible. Inherent controls in their melee abilities or something. But really, barring controls you should have no problems staying at range even in oranbega. Hover in the larger rooms, combat jumping...sprint...The increase in defense helps you dodge status effects that stop you from getting away from enemies.

Combat Jumping works when you're not held, slept, or stacked with immob. Caltrops, glue grenade, various Earth Control powers have -jump on them as well as -fly.

If you want to increase Blaster survivability, you need to acknowledge that always staying at range is just not possible in every situation. That in and of itself is the biggest problem right there. Other ATs have their own method of surviving, and very rarely are they confronted with the big gaping weakness in survivability, unless you take an invuln brute/tanker/scrapper redside and decide to face a bunch of Arachnos as you level.

The large rooms you mentioned in Orangebagel? They certainly exist, but sometimes the worst are those very cramped hallways where melee is going to happen, no matter how hard you try. Hoverblasting works when you can maintain altitude, and if the enemy in question is incapable of flight or nasty ranged attacks.

I won't say use IOs or inspirations, because those are not always available, and the basic form of survival for Blaster should not be to rely on something that not everyone can access (IO sets take time and a lot of effort or luck, inspirations could wear off at the wrong time).

add 3% to 5% defense to each defiance stack. The more you attack, the more damage you do the more defense you have.

Give each blaster APP a shadowmeld spike survival type power using different mechanics and let blasters unlock APPs at level 14. Fast recharging but short duration spike defense, spike resist, spike regen, spike hot, or spike absorb.

So... How much would it break the game to increase Blaster's melee and damage modifiers by 50-100% without changing anything else?

newchemicals said:

Let me toss this out there for discussion purposes.

An even level minion deals about 6% of blaster health in damage for a scale 1.0 ranged attack, and 10% of blaster health in damage for a scale 1.0 melee attack. The average minion deals something like 0.2-0.3 DS/sec in net average damage, factoring in base 50% tohit.

At range, that's about 1.2%/sec - 1.8%/sec damage per minion. Now lets assume that a +3x1 spawn is the target balance point - the devs have said in the past that three +3 minions is the rough balance point once a strong SO build is achieved. And lets also assume that blaster offensive damage mitigation is good enough to eliminate the damage from at least one minion out of three on average completely.

That would mean the blaster would average facing about 1.0 such minions while in combat (the average of two, one, and zero), which would average dealing about 1.33 * 1.3 * 1.2 * 1.0 = 2.1%/sec on the low end, and about 3.1%/sec on the high end.

Lets also say that a solo blaster spends about 75% of their time in missions in combat, and 25% out of combat. I would expect then that blaster damage mitigation should be able to survive at least 1.6%/sec to 2.3%/sec across an entire mission. Assuming blasters have slotted health, their intrinsic regeneration is about 0.74%/sec.

So that suggests blasters have to somehow mitigate about 0.9%/sec to 1.6%/sec of damage to reach that very rough goal. That implies reducing incoming damage by about 60%, or doubling to tripling blaster health recovery, or some combination of the two.

This is the *floor* of balance. Blasters shouldn't go lower than this. They could go significantly higher without being a problem, and that's entirely possible with a level of player skill that, say, improves the odds on the offensive side (I know I'm neutralizing a lot more than one minion out of three on average with attacks, but I also know the average player isn't, or they wouldn't have been dying pre-I11).

That's an extremely fuzzy target to aim at, but I feel very comfortable in saying that blaster overall survivability should on average at least double. That's not going to necessarily turn blasters into scrappers or tankers because their survivability is so much higher, and average survivability isn't the same thing as alpha strike survivability. Its worth noting that giving blasters a 50% res(all) shield and giving them slotted fast healing both double survivability, but only one of them would make blasters a far more effective tanking archetype.


Edit: corrected a calculation error: it changes the numbers only slightly from the original.

In the case of survivability I think a good place one can begin (but not the only place!) is with what blasters already have.

Power Pool/APP/PPP values for all aspects of the powers should be reviewed. Some powers have excessively long cooldowns, low durations or low base values (or all of the above) in proportion to what they do relative to other AT's. The defensive toggles (hover, tough, weave, app/ppp, etc) should have their base values improved, The holds should have their base durations increased and base recharge times reduced.

EM Pulse from the Electrical Mastery pool should have a shorter recharge time and longer duration. Surge of Power and Force of Nature should have their base resistance values increased slightly.

The aoe sleeps should have their recharge times reduced. The debuff powers such as surveillance and melt armor should have their base values increased.

Many AT's find their APP/PPP's game changing when they open up but Blasters seem to get less overall from them compared to the other AT's with Scorpion Shield being the only real outlier.

APP/PPP powers are supposed to let AT's dip into skills outside their typical repertoire but when the base values are so very low they hardly qualify as worthwhile even when enhanced. Reviewing these powers could improve blaster overall performance.

As I said that's not the only place improvements can be made but it's not a bad place to start since it's simply a matter of letting blasters get higher base values from things they already have so it's not so painfully difficult (and expensive) to build up that lacking survivability.