Fulmens

Goat: I said "median Blaster" not "average Blaster" for just that reason. I'm sorry, AR/Dev; I'm sorry.

Arcanaville:
I have a counterargument, but not enough math to support it. My gut feeling [flinch] is that burstiness is disproportionately valuable[1]. If a perfectly even stream of damage buff was just as valuable as a short, intense burst, every Blaster should value Assault higher than BU and Aim combined. [2]

Maybe burstiness is only of significant value to Blasters. [3] Maybe Blasters make suboptimal use of their bonus damage because they need it to make up for the lack of defense. Maybe the perceived benefits [4] are not enough to overcome the advantage of one or two REALLY good powers like AAO.

[1] Every casino loves a gambler who goes on gut instinct, don't they?
[2] "should" and "does" are dramatically different things, of course.
[3] It is interesting to watch Scrappers react to "really dangerous" enemies- I'm thinking Sappers in the good old days- because all of a sudden quick mezzes, burst damage, etc. is VERY important. It's like Blasters are, every minute of every fight.
[4] Burst bonus can be applied moving between spawns, it can augment an alpha or otherwise be strategically applied to the best attacks, and its advantages are magnified by the downtime between fights. AAO has essentially all of these advantages, of course.

I'm with Yogi Bare on this one. The median Scrapper has one 100% Build Up; the median Blaster has one 100% Build Up and one 65% [from memory] Aim.

The Scrapper outliers may be much stronger and/or more common than I realize.

Yogi :
Blaster melee damage multiplier is 1.0 . Blaster range multiplier and scrapper "melee" multiplier (as Arcanaville points out, which is used for all their range attacks) is 1.125 . Not "twice". While Blaster melee attacks may tend to be harder-hitting, that's a higher damage scale on the individual attack. (damage scale * damage multiplier * a level-based number = total damage.)

Crit damage is between 5% and 10% of the total (I used 8% but it's not like 7% or even 6% is going to change the numbers that much.) Pick a number in the middle and it's going to be plenty close for our purposes.

For AoEs, you can't say an AOE is an AOE is an AOE. Fire Breath is something like 60% more damage than, say, Energy Torrent. Scrappers have a LOT of high damage PBAOE's and cones. I'm also not sure how you're coming up with the high number of "AOEs" per secondary; the only ones I get any leverage out of, and this may be my playstyle, are Fire Sword Circle and Psychic Scream and Psychic Shockwave.

EDIT: Do Scrappers have a really terrible ranged scale [that they never use]? I failed to keep that piece of data in my mind.

Starsman, I had a similar idea I tossed in here somewhere, except you could fire it off whenever you want, not just when the bar is full. Shorter mez protection, shorter and less damage, but you don't have to wait. You can do it when you NEED to do it.

I'm not married to any particular Absorb mechanic- I'm hoping someone comes up with a better one than I did.

My goal with Absorb was to make Blasters 2-3 times tougher than they are, without opening them up to "I stacked this with four random powers and now I never die" mechanicking. Maybe I'm too conservative in my goals, but I'm happy with Blasters being the least tough of all the AT's, and doing the most damage. How, you may ask, does that differ? I'm not happy with blasters being "The least tough" by a factor of 3-5 and doing "the most damage" by a factor of 1.2 or thereabouts.

It's very hard to manage a game where a so-so Scrapper can live 30 seconds and a so-so Blaster can live 5. That's an awful wide spread.

My changes to Devices would involve Targeting Drone be +tohit AND + damage, for one thing. Maybe Fortitude-level or a little less. And replacing Time Bomb with anything else. And maybe some sort of arcane Smoke Grenade "only stacks twice" trick. If (Blinded) and not (Blinded2), apply (Blinded2), something like that. Then you'd have something that gave up quick kills for a legitimate longer lifetime.

It would probably be a lot of coding to build something into Time Bomb that put a new button on the character's bar in the same spot, labelled "Detonate early".

Didn't see a thread like this, so I'm starting one. I didn't look very hard.

I don' t know how many openings I'm going to have but the plan is, 12 N Eastern/9 AM Pacific on Saturday, to run Sister Psyche twice in a row on Exalted.

Anyone else planning anything cool?

@Boltcutter

Parry's a pretty huge difference.

"Broadsword doesn't have anything going for it except the ability to CAP MELEE AND LETHAL DEFENSE ALMOST BY ITSELF" didn't sound as good, I'm guessing.

I barely scratch high end builds, even now I'm rich and they're cheap, and _I_ soloed an AV. On a stalker. At level 41.

I realized that I've been concentrating on the "Enough Damage" side of the equation. It's easier for me to calculate and prove. Blaster survivability also needs a kick upwards.

Something that occurred to me: Blasters have bigger dead-while-mezzed and time-spent mezzed numbers. There is another possible explanation than "mez causes death" (it certainly helps...) Mez increases in the higher levels, where huge brutal damage hits also increase. As per my one-data-point experiment,a +1 Freak Tank does 60% of a blaster's HP in a single melee attack. (And the other 40% in a knockdown grenade and sawblade.) I seem to remember that Rikti swords, for one, cause a similar level of distress.

So it is possible that the Blaster dies while mezzed because the mez lands a few milliseconds before the 3000 HP of return fire does.

I think the new "Absorb" mechanic might be a possible durability solution for Blasters; BU or Aim each come with 50% of base Blaster HP of Absorb? It may or may not be a perfect solution, but it requires no new code and it's really easy to implement. AR and Dev would require ... some other solution. Poor AR and Dev.

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.

Something that may/may not help scrape out a few extra percentage points: you can use Enhancement Boosters to turn an even-con IO into a +1, up to +5; I don't know what a L55 generic Defense IO gets you but it might change the math enough.

When you're building a melee character, you live and die by the build.
When you're building a Blaster, you live and die by the playstyle.

Whatever you play, my suggestion, when you get to your mid-20s or similar, is to do some lab experiments in a hazard zone. Like any experiment, safety equipment is crucial.

1. Get a bunch of medium Lucks (or small ones if you have to.)
2. Go to Hazard Zone.
3. Find a group you think you could take on, if it wasn't for the death problem. (with Fire Blasters, that's generally like "eight even-con minions and a couple lieutenants".)
4. Put on your safety equipment (four small Lucks, two mediums, or two small and a medium.)
5. Choose what seems like the right amount of Build Up and Aim, set up your AOE's, and fire them off.
6. Eliminate the survivors, figuring out what worked and what didn't.
7. Repeat steps 3-6 with different level enemies, different buffs, until you're comfortable with your damage output and how to apply it fast and hard. Remember your safety equipment!
8. Once you are comfortable doing this in lab conditions.... try it without the purples.

Madadh: The next time you find yourself in a discussion where the other person's trumpeting the joy of playing a blaster, ask questions.

"How much more damage would you say you do than a scrapper with the same amount of inf sunk in their build?" You'll probably get an answer, if they're being accurate, like "20%" or "30%".

"How much tougher is that scrapper than you are?" You'll probably get an answer like "I don't die [much]" or "It doesn't matter, I kill things too fast" or some variant on "I don't know" or "I don't play them" or "I don't want to answer that question."

The answer, for most builds for most of the game, is "Scrappers are six times tougher, plus the advantage of mez protection."

How much tougher are Brutes? Six times tougher. How much more damage do Blasters do? Maybe 20%. Tanks? Ten times tougher, but at least Blasters do considerably more damage. Corruptors? Maybe only three times tougher, and don't have mez protection.

Six times tougher. 18% less damage. That is not balanced. (Incidentally, we went almost a month before someone brought up City of Blasters on the blaster boards. Yeah, June 2004 was the good month to be a blaster.)

So looks like they countered with 5 billion inf.

... and now they're back in second place.

Arcanaville: Can a Brute, with no expiring buffs (Build Up, powers from secondary, powers from support characters, anything but Assault) 1-shot even con minions with any non-nukeoid AOE powers? Shatter, and Arc of Destruction look close.

The obvious question behind the question is if anyone can, on a 6-10 second timer, 1-shot even con minions in bulk. I think Mace/Shield Brutes can do it. And of course in the 2-shot category, more than half of Brutes can do it.

Why are their best AOE attacks better than our best AOE attacks? Fire Blasters can two-shot minions, with Assault and some defiance.

I'm not even talking about nukes. I'm talking about Battle Axe, I'm talking about Claws, I'm talking about Mace and Fiery Melee and Titan Weapons and... and... FFFFffffuuuuu....

... oh hell, I forgot to do this:

/e hands over the diamond-encrusted platinum TV remote

You have earned the power. Use it wisely.

There's a lot of inf in conversion these days. I know at least three ways to make 200M per Alignment Merit from converting IOs, not counting purples (where the main challenge is getting the purples), and I doubt I've found the best return on investment. I keep getting distracted by, like, random-converting rare 30s or 35s. (Not the best ROI, but I like it and it feeds my Midlevel Crisis urges. The "jackpot" moments are fun.)