Erratic

Its not fair for them to change the game? I'm pretty sure the liscence for the game indicates play may change. Besides, group function has little bearing here as the discussion is solo play. Groupwise, Blasters remain the big guns and are cushioned by the pressence of others.

Blasters and Defenders have the same hps. As to healing, if a Tank Smasher hits you with his Disorient, you're not doing anything but praying for a way out.

As to the status effect powers being affected by To-Hit Debuffs but not Def, given the way some Scrappers +Def powers are described, I could believe it. Might have to try it at some point.

Hmmm. . . Punisher.

RI is a 30% To-Hit debuff from what I hear. Each SO brings that up by 10% (33% of 30 is 10%), so I run at either 60% or 70% typically depending on how I've most recently slotted it. My Defender has no other +Def abilities. At 2 levels above me the power should be 80% effective, or a 48-56% To-Hit Debuff. From geko's comments on SG that means it is cutting their basic chance to hit in half.

Gotta be forgetting something as that isn't enough to allow anyone to stand in front of a Tank Smasher, let alone a Paragon Protectore, and I've done that too at +2 levels.

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First of all the increased prevalence of holds, stuns, and sleeps in the enemies does not place an increased emphasis on defence. Observe that there is no power pool power that grants resistance to these attacks.

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+Def works against all of them, if they can't land they don't matter. But no, there is no 100% effective power against most of them. Even so, high Def has its benefits. I manage to stand in front of Tank Smashers with my Defender and take them down before that lucky shot lands that results in staggering about like a drunk. Add in natural Blaster powers that Disorient and Hold and high Def, while not immunity, has its merits.

My apologies to the thread, I won't continue to roll in the mud.

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I have no problem soloing post release 2. In fact I think the changes are quite refreshing.... fact is I haven't had to change a single tactic or stratagem. I'm complaining about proposed changes. You just ran in and started flapping your gums. And having played a blaster to level 41 of course I'm more qualified to talk about it 's strenghts and weaknesses.

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No, you're more qualified to speak about your build and presumably you'd be expected to have a larger clue. But there are Ph.D.s that I know who have none, and in a like vein there you are.

You were whining, predicating a decline in Blaster fortunes based on current changes.

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since you seem to know how to play a blaster the "right" way.. tell us all the great secret.

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Uh uh, I won't claim to know the right way, I just know that repeating what isn't working and crying about it is not productive and that crying for things to return to what they were isn't likely to work. I suggest focusing more on defense because clearly it works for ATs that don't deliver the same damage as Blasters do (say like that Defender in my sig). If I can go out and solo with her at will, the question that should come to mind for any thinking individual is, "Why?" And when that question is answered, what in that answer can a Blaster then do to make his life easier.

No, Radiation Infection isn't open for Blasters, but other powers that do the same basic thing are. Hmmm. . .perhaps taking them would be a good idea.

Lingering Radiation? Not open to Blasters either (for that matter not open to anything other than a Radiation Emission possessing Defender or Controller), but powers that slow opponents can be found in both Ice Blast and Ice Manipulation.

See the approach?

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Nope. I see someone who hasn't played my build for 41 levels, and has never seen me play telling me to "change tactics"

defender board ---->

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You're too upset over having your little feelings hurt to see someone who has made do with weaker attacks and yet survives and solos happily post Update 2. If it'll make you feel better about yourself, I lose no stock in:

I declare here and now that hapheastus is the lord and master of all knowledge of things Blaster, especially in comparison to your's truly.

Now, get over it and look at what's been said.

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since you seem to know how to play a blaster the "right" way.. tell us all the great secret.

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Uh uh, I won't claim to know the right way, I just know that repeating what isn't working and crying about it is not productive and that crying for things to return to what they were isn't likely to work. I suggest focusing more on defense because clearly it works for ATs that don't deliver the same damage as Blasters do (say like that Defender in my sig). If I can go out and solo with her at will, the question that should come to mind for any thinking individual is, "Why?" And when that question is answered, what in that answer can a Blaster then do to make his life easier.

No, Radiation Infection isn't open for Blasters, but other powers that do the same basic thing are. Hmmm. . .perhaps taking them would be a good idea.

Lingering Radiation? Not open to Blasters either (for that matter not open to anything other than a Radiation Emission possessing Defender or Controller), but powers that slow opponents can be found in both Ice Blast and Ice Manipulation.

See the approach?

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Could you please post your Blaster build that is designed to engage in long-term battles?

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I'll assume that you're reading my comment on designing for more than alpha-striking to mean designing for drawn out fights. A Blaster remains a major damage dealer even if alpha-striking goes away. The point shouldn't be to survive a 20m battle but rather to survive long enough that even without alpha-striking you win. As to posting a build, do you want one you don't believe a single build exists that meets the requirements or are you wanting a general build for all blasters to go by?

Defense comes down to either denying attacks or mitigating the impact of attacks. Alpha-striking was a method of denying attacks, as things that were dead couldn't strike back. Taking it off the table for now, what remains? Knockback/Knockdown, Disorient, Slow, Immobilize, and Hold at least. Mitigation takes the form of resistance, +Defense, -Accuracy/To-Hit Debuffs, healing, damage reduction (not open to Blasters).

I would focus on taking as much of those as you can get.

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You would have players build a weak defensive-oriented blaster that exchanges offensive powers for a few defensive ones? Its sounds as if you are trying to change the nature of the blaster to me.

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No, I would have you recognize that insufficient defense means not surviving long enough to use all the offense you stocked up on. Is it absolutely necessary to have every damage dealing power open to you to be a good blaster? If so why? If not, then don't defenses give you more opportunity to use your offense?

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A defender is what you are thinking of, someone that can buff/debuff/bubble and still knock out a few offensive shots.......if you revisit the blaster builds, you will find little or nothing to aid in their defense outside of the generic power pools, and those are better suited to other ATs.

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And no doubt playing a Defender for as long as I have colors my thinking. (Of course at the time I was putting up with a bunch of people saying you should have made a Blaster.) No, Blasters as a whole don't enjoy a great defensive theme. That doesn't mean they don't have powers and effects that don't serve defensive purposes or that the Power Pool doesn't offer some of what is lacked.

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BTW, if we wanted to talk about the ease of CoH post-30th level, I wouldn't be opposed to studying the Tanks, Scrappers, Controllers and Defenders. Do the Controllers or Tanks have any fear once they reach 30th level? Seems like the ones I meet are bored because their jobs become too easy and they end up re-rolling....

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They should stick around, I'm sure the Envoy of Shadows, the Blades of Artemis, the Carnival and Malta will give them something to relieve their boredom.

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Honestly, I don't think that the game is THAT hard for any AT post-30

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Which explains the boredom you see and why the changes that have been made have occurred.

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Erratic

Well if blasters are meant to stay out of melee, why do we have so damn many melee range attacks, I can name 10 right off the top of my head.

energy has at least 4
fire has 2, and flame breath is damn close range
AR has buckshot, and flamethrower
etc etc.

I was fighting freakshow tanks last night, had one charging me so i hit slug, he is outta range but coming forward, slug activates and the tank is damn near on top of me now i kite just as he gets to melee, luckily i got away in time with SS.
Now I was lucky, usually they get a swipe and remove 90% of my health.

If blaster are meant to stay out of melee, give us more range with our attacks. Also as far as avoiding said groups well when you do missions like I do, and it say kill 30 freakshows in terra, my mob size choices are limited to groups that are 10 in size.

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The answer to this is very simple. Erratic is an idiot.

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You're the one who can't figure out the message was directed to me. Feel free to go put a slug into your brain. . . oh wait, that wouldn't have any impact as you're not using it for anything.

To address the questiion I would point out that there is a difference between entering melee with a single target and entering melee against an entire spawn and ask the asker if he expects. The developers refer to Tankers and Scrappers as the melee classes and don't mention Blasters in their company, so whatever else Blaster melee attacks are for, it is hard to see how they are meant for the same purpose as Shadow Maul and Headsplitter. One might figure they are an option for dealing with things that get close that don't need much more to be dispatched, and failing the dispatch to deliver a secondary effect like a Hold, Knockback, or Disorient to better allow the Blaster to otherwise deal with the target or get away.

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WHAT!!!! NO WAY....I have rolled many blaster AT's....fyi....before the update i could roast 10-15 1+ MoBs with just my blaster 6slotted flamethrower...

I got to lvl16 with a fire/dev blaster before i realized i wasnt having fun...again my tastes.....two words......firebreath...fireball....

hooowheee....not tryin to be uncivil...but plz know what ur talkin bout before you try to make me sound like an idiot....and fyi WE ARE SUPER HEROES....could you imagine Superman being killed by 10 thugs on the street?????

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If he did erratdork would be standing there saying "it wasn't the krypronite in their clubs... you need to change your tactics.?

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Hotairus still wagging his tongue?

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And also takes a small eternity to drop anything by himself, unlike say a Blaster.


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Not with the right choices in powers. Whirring hands will make short work of 10 +2 minions. For that matter grab 90 more then jump in a dumpster and start spamming an AoE and all 100 will die pretty fast.

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I'm not sure how quick the work will be using an Activation 3, Recharge 14, moderate damage (for a Tanker) power. Regularly when I play I get to take potshots at things the Tankers in the group are still wrestling with on my Defender or I get to leap over and go to town on them with my Scrapper. That doesn't happen to the Blasters in the group short of them literally having just started working on something.

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And risk being skewered in turn by melee attacks


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10 +2 minions pose no threat to a well built scrapper.

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Depends on the minions really and what weaknesses the scrapper has. Sappers are nasty to everyone, and Daughter of Artemis. . .while not great dangers immediately can really build to some life threatening conclusions.

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And risk being skewered in turn by melee attacks


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Against 10 2+ minions? I can guarantee you that my fire controller will go through groups like this like crazy with no risk to me whatsoever. The only problem is finding enough of them to satisfy my apatite. If I can find a second group I will likely have that dead before a blaster using TB is even up and hunting again after willing the first one.

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At the rate this is going, everyone else is immune to +2 level minions. Is this what you're saying? That I don't witness people dying to various things on a nightly basis? Last I looked a Controller remained quite vulnerable to status effects and still had attacks that could miss their targets. Of course one or two missed mobs doesn't mean instant death, but the door opens at that point to the possibility of all sorts of negative consequences.


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There is a reason, oddly enough ignored by you, that there are a sea of level 50 Blasters in comparison to what else has made it to 50.


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If we discount people who were PL’d I know more controllers, tanks and scrappers then blasters.

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It is odd that PL'ing should favor one AT over all the others, but I do know what I see more of when 50s go by, at least on Justice.

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Now here is an complete idiot in his natural habitat

Erratic

Congrats Erratic, you win the complete Noob award for a complete stupid comment that basically says.. "change your tactics"

Good for you.. Hey next time tell them to go after mobs of 1 to 3 .. (even though you may run around and hour to find one)

Or better yet (giggle) tell them to team..

HA..

your an AOE Blaster.. instead of running up and using AOEs.. you should use.. .. uh....wait.. uh.. brawl?

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People will leap on me for what I write, but at least what I write has some bearing to the topic. I'll take such rants as indications that I've upset morons who evidently just want to cry and can't back up their wailing with anything substantive.

Do yourself a favor and put your brain dead self six feet under before the stench gets any worse.

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1. A scrapper has FAR less a risk of eing "skewered" then a blaster.

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A Scrapper is going straight into the spawn himself. He generally doesn't get to attempt to snipe one who has wandered away from the group for an easy kill and reduction in the size of the spawn. Everything will be turning to face him immediately. Scrappers are also notoriously poor at ranged AT attacks so even the AE attacks they get are delivered up close and personal. Nobody is saying that a Blaster won't be slaughtered if he tries to run up into melee with a spawn, but a Blaster doesn't operate that way anyway, a Scrapper does and that means it entails risks that the Blaster isn't taking.

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2. Controller same. I see Fire Controllers barreling through group after group without breaking a sweat. Fire Controller soloing is neither time consuming nor dangerous.

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Seen one doing so after the update? I tend to agree that they have a level of safety that Blasters don't have, but on the other hand pets can get into their own routines that are sometimes not beneficial to the Controller, say when they are fixating on something while another thing is laying a hurting on their master. In any event, Fire Imps don't kill as quickly as before, generally doing about half the damage they used to do and that translates into roughly twice as long for a Controller to get a kill and twice as long for something to go wrong.

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3. Device blasters can still solo without smoke grenade. Not quite at Scrapper level safety (and yes Smoke Grenade provided nothing more then the level of Protection that an SR scrapper enjoys) but still good.

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One day running to the tram in IP I heard gunfire and turned to see if I was being fired on. Nope, was some single guy who had drawn the wrath of the 5th Column. Checking him out it turned out to be a Blaster of the same level as my Scrapper. I figured the guy was about to be in serious trouble, and then I noticed that he was at full health and remained there. Then I thought he must have someone healing him, but looking revealed no such help. At that point my brain turned on as I noticed the dark cloud around each of the 5th. He was untouched against mobs that, yes my Defender would have taken down, but he wouldn't have done so without a scratch. Sorry, I can't call that about the same level of protection.

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Aren't you supposed to get creamed by 10 even cons all aggroed at once? I think at 26 it works that way for almost every archetype.

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A tanker can go to sleep while 10 +2minions are beating on him....

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And also takes a small eternity to drop anything by himself, unlike say a Blaster.

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A scrapper would skewer 10 +2 minions.

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And risk being skewered in turn by melee attacks, which hit far harder than do NPC ranged attacks.

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A controller with pets can destroy +2 minions with one hold and a swarm of pets.

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Again, takes time and comes with risks.

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and no one cares. it's all good. light one thunderous blast under said minions and suddenly everyone has a problem.

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More like casually run from spawn to spawn faster than any of the above ATs with Flamethrower and Full Auto and people take notice. Though I admit that with perma-Hasten and a level 32 power more typical of Blasters than Full Auto that quite a bit can suddenly find itself dead on a pretty regular basis.

There is a reason, oddly enough ignored by you, that there are a sea of level 50 Blasters in comparison to what else has made it to 50.

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Come on, could we keep this civil?

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I've been quite civil, unlike the name calling and accusation of misquoting some have been tossing about.

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theres also no need for Erratic to be "fixing my statements" That is condescending and insulting, even though he was right on the money.

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There, fixed that for you.

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Deliberately misquoting people is a highly reprehensible activity that will get you labeled, correctly I might add, as a troll in most internet forums.

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When I clearly indicate "fixed that" then it isn't misquoting, and indeed the bolded sections indicate what was fixed.

Call it a shorthand way of putting my differences with what is being said up while noting where I differ with what the original poster is saying.

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theres also no need for Erratic to be "fixing my statements" That is condescending and insulting, even though he was right on the money.

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There, fixed that for you.

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God.... morons like you just don't get it..... If Statesman goes through with his plans we won't be able to solo ANY groups with any resonable reliability so long as we continue to build and act like we did in the past.

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There, fixed that for you.

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no thanks [censored] hole.

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It was not problem, whiner.

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Build like what? Ignore offense and self gimp?

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More like only thinking about offense and only paying minimum thought to defense.

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There are blasters already doing that. combat jumping, fighting, manuevers, 6 slotted smoke grenade... stealth.... cloaking devices...hover. guess what? you're still flat on your [censored] dead.

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Not from personal experience, not according to others that have respec'd themselves and adjusted their playstyle to something other than running upto a group of 10-12 mobs all higher level than themselves and expecting everything to just die.

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still stunned and one shotted. Change the way you play? there's absolutely nothing wrong with the way I play.

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Then what are you wagging your tongue for?

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stop trying to solo huge mobs above your lvl if you want a game that you can solo go play doom III. /end rant

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Yes because this is only deserved for other ATs!!!

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Such as?

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God.... morons like you just don't get it..... If Statesman goes through with his plans we won't be able to solo ANY groups with any resonable reliability so long as we continue to build and act like we did in the past.

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There, fixed that for you.

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Statesman, I've noticed that you've been talking about making mobs tougher (although increasing their xp), and also making changes (making them weaker, I am assuming) to blaster AOEs, all because you believe that the game post 30 is too easy.

Is this the correct way to fix the issue at large? Making mobs tougher and making our AOE weaker will only make our job as blasters more tough.

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Well yes, if the game is too easy and they take steps to make it harder, it is going to make your job tougher. . .that is a logical consequence.

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Some will call it challenging, but I don't see it as challenging in a fun way, rather more frustrating to gain xp. This is especially true since most of our attacks rely heavily on alpha strike. We really can't survive long term engagements.

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The ability to rely on one-shot, heavy damage up front kills is why the game has been too easy (for some). Rather obviously if that makes the game too easy then addressing that is what is going to occur. As to not being able to survive long term engagement. . .have you ever built to do so? Probably not. Common wisdom was Aim + Build Up + AE = Win, there was no need to build to try to survive a long engagement and so nobody did.

Those days are over.

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The larger issue - making the game more challenging post 30 - cannot be solved by making the same mobs that we've been fighting all this time suddenly tougher.

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Why not? You don't explain why making the mobs tougher doesn't make the game more challenging.

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1. Devs increase minion HP
2. People complain that Tanks/Defenders/Controllers cannot solo anymore
3. Devs increase Damage for Tanks/Defenders/Controllers.
4. People complain that Blasters and Scrappers aren't as special/needed anymore
5. Devs increase Damage for Blaster and Scrapper but ONLY NON-AE powers.
6. People complain that LT, Boss, Monster and Arch Villains are too easy with the Damage Boost
7. Devs increase HP for all enemies but Minions

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Drop step (4) and (6) and (7) cease to be an issue.

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No offense to the British. I love the English, just not the food


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None taken. I can rest assured knowing however that we have decent bacon. Something the US sadly lacks British food is uninspired at best, thankfully though you are never far from a decent Chinese, Indian, Itallian, French or Mexican restraunt!

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I admit, it is hard to find good bacon (at least in my corner of the US). Still, thanks to the joys of immigration I have within easy striking distance Indian, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Brazilian, Mexican, TexMex (there is a difference), German, Italian, and Greek.

We take our eating quite serious in these here parts.

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But in this case, why should I listen to you?

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Because I copied over to the Test server and have played under the update?

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So have most of the others who have negative feedback. This doesn't make you any different than them. Only the opinions are different.

This is why I asked for a response from the DEV team, and not the fanbois.

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Not a fanboy, but if we're giving out names, how about I call you an anxious whiner?

Fact: I play solo when I'm on Test. I don't group. It hasn't been noticably harder for me to play with either a Defender or a Scrapper. I succeeded in getting my cape, earning my aura.