New Dawn

This is a little pot kettle given your chart in the other thread where Devices comes far behind all the other secondaries in terms of nothing, because nothing was stated.

My Blasters do differ in terms of how they go about surviving; I have already stated that; I could make them all soft capped to range and pew pew and blap but I don't because they can also rely on different forms of control and one can bait and trap if necessary. The good part, what is good to me, is getting through things using an alternative set of resources and having to sometimes stop and think about things properly. I would think it arrogant and stupid of anyone to regard their values as the only values so by the same token I do not tell anyone why they should or shouldn't play a /Dev. Although if it looks appealing conceptually, try it.

My time on the forums goes way back to when certain powers were said to be useless and basically those people who said that those certain powers were useless regarded that to be the final truth of the matter. But not all the powers they said was useless, it was they who were useless. I knew they were no good because in some other thread they talked about all the things they could not do, and that it was impossible, which was cake to me, and lo and behold it was cake because I had powers they didn't have.

It's not in me to tell people what they will like or not like, what to take, what to skip, I see a power, I'll give an example of its use. I should be done with that.

You struggled with the arc therefore its crap? What about the however many who've only just got theirs to 50 after making one a couple of months ago who got through it no problem? I think maybe we should look at your build.

I don't pick a character to be the best at very few things. I look to make all my characters different.

I could pretty much have every different type of tanker and then try and turn them into the same immortal thing because lets say I only tanked one way but the end result would be me wondering why I have 8 tankers all the same.

It's even easier to make most blasters all about ranged defense, pew pew and blap. This would give me no reason to play the different blaster types though.

If my idea of good was limited to certain things, that /Dev doesn't supply then it would never be played. My arrogance is not in telling people that its crap somehow believing full well the person I am telling this too will agree. I don't limit people with my limitations either with "I couldn't make it work, therefore as you are more stupid than me, you won't neither". I am not trying to maintain that it is great, thats a personal feeling. If /Devices needs looking at then perhaps the entire Blaster list of secondaries do too. What I do know is, despite all the negativity some people have, there are alot of /Devs about none the less.

We know fun is subjective, and that we all have different concepts, we can all therefore choose to play differently. Therefore it's not in my intention to tell people what they need or what they will find fun as it also isn't my intention to limit others by my own limitations. Now I expect other people to see sense in that. It is simply easier to be blunt about things and sometimes better to let people decide for themselves. As with all my blasters I spend more time utilizing my primary than my secondary. I don't stop teams, I don't try to lay a mine in the middle of a group. Its not often in teams I will do so unless a blatant opportunity arises.

Traps is better for keeping a team alive and it would be, Devices is meant to be less so. There is a good argument for making a Traps over Devices. I'm not here to say that Devices is better. The OP never asked that question.

I have 3 NRG blasters, due to power boost they have vengeance early which means I forego blapping till later, for I can't see when my blaps save the day either. My mindset prefers vengeance over getting in melee and giving a little burst. I am comparing blasters, I've compared the blaster primary and secondary powersets on excel before taking in every known detail, much is balanced, what is hard to say is balanced are the trade offs in how they're meant to be played. So perhaps..

Rather than sit here in the Blaster section saying "Why make a /Devices over a Traps?" one could decide to go to the Archetypes and Powers in general section and ask "Why make a Blaster instead of a Corrupter?"

Some people don't range def all their blasters, hover kiting and mainly using the primary is something I would do on my AR/NRG but sometimes I would want to play my AR/Devices differently (who has lots of range def and trip mines and time bomb) . I might not want to be a one trick pwny with all my blasters, each of my blasters have to be different to me. I would do the x*+* using my devices.

Now I do have a Sonic/Traps and that can be played with a different set of values to my Devices and it is the Trip Mine and Time Bomb that are in excess. They are my skippable powers in that set. My Robot/Traps skipped them too.

If I didnt like to not only do different content when leveling up different toons and play in a different way, partially down to concept too my gripe would be when teaming "Why choose a Blaster over a Corrupter?"

Team leaders, sometimes I give them rope so they can learn or I can learn. I have done CoP so many, many times, every which way and still sometimes let people work it all out without my input so that the team has what I had in the beginning, one person who susses it and the rest of the team going with the worst idea..no wait, the chance to suss it for themselves *cough*.

Usually someone isn't doing their job properly, powers wise we have everything we could possibly need and yet still people fail to apply whats needed and then there is the inevitable positioning of players, the person keeping say the whole team standing is putting themselves where they have maximum chance of getting killed. On an Mo I've told controllers not to be within 20ft of an AV, a min later they run in and use flurry. My emp couldn't fort the entire team. Sometimes its when the tank is aggro capped and some twit scrapper goes and tries to show off by bringing lots more back who then leave him and take out the team, then take him out anyway and then finally too much fight duration on the tank and its over. As if ambushes weren't sometimes bad enough, some squish aggro caps what they can't handle attracts more and then comes an actual ambush.

An increase in magnitude makes it effective on?

The s/l def bonus is in no way better than the damage output of Oil Slick. Why hope for a group of mobs to miss you when they could all be dead and unable to hit the team?

Disruption Arrow. Because you fire a pet this is the power you could use as often as you like because it stacks so even if it is 15s recharge that means you can stack one disruption arrow with another on an AV along with a single application of acid arrow at a time.

Your focused on defense rather than the active mitigation you could put out. My mind controller has no defense except for combat jump. She survives through her controls. That's active defense. Sometimes my Icetanks which is softcapped easy, survival comes down to active defense. I know people see defense as the be all and end all but its not completely true. The greatest level of defense comes from having a mixed bag of tricks. The more often that mixed bag of tricks can be used the better. Haste was never over rated. Compared to Combat Jump which does more than the S/L def you're getting Haste even increases a typical tankers survivability. It's by a small margin compared to haste but thats if you are only counting passive mitigation, by the time you count in active mitigation the margin becomes larger. It's upto you what you feel is best it's your toon but you are going to be one of the few people with an Oil Slick slotted that way.

Teamwipes can't always be prevented. It doesn't matter how good some tanker thinks they are if I could play 7 other toons and be stupid all at the same time I will get all 7 of them killed and maybe even the tank for good measure.

Edit: I think it fair to say that anyone that comes around here gloating how they are always the last man standing is doing something wrong.

Well go back through your wording because I can't even get through this first paragraph without seeing something that isn't true. XD

I think you're too easily pleased from your first sentence. I would concentrate on the complete powerset if it were me. I know how to play my Trick Archer, in any given team make up, I know what I can offer other powersets because I know other powersets but its upto the players in the team whether or not they want make the most of it. Some people have one dynamic no matter what the defender. This means I can decide on two things either people fail using a TA for support or TA just doesn't have the goods.

Its a rare circumstance where I find that TA didnt have the goods. Now that could come down to the server my TA is on, a server where TA is welcomed without a moments thought and people in general know how to play their toons.

When I look at TA I look at the controls too and they count, you can't just compare debuffs and leave stuff out and the whole set has to fulfil a concept, the way it should be used to defend a team should be to that concept. In that it definitely suceeds. It's as good a defender to me as any. Every defender has its niches if people cant play to them, then its not upto the Devs to fix say the TA set and give it heal arrow. It used to be that I thought AV fights took too long but even now with all the changes in other areas of the game I wouldn't be so sure anymore.

I play all other support sets and am still pleased with what my TA brings. If anything to me Sonic or Poison would be sets I'd look at. As I understand it Liquefy would of been on a shorter recharge timer if it weren't for controllers and poison trap from the poison set is one of the most skippable things I've seen on a set which might do with no skippable powers. So on one hand there is sonic, which I have but don't feel brings enough to the table and on the other there is a skippable power in Poison which I'd like to know the bright idea behind.

The devs should know what theyre basing things on from their more refined datamining. It's easier just to say "These are what I play and out of them I feel that such and such is underperforming in various described scenarios". In truth there are more AVs I'd happily rely on a TA for than there are with Sonic.

Blasters are still Damage/Support, not as much support as Corrupters but its still support. An empath can turn my Elec/Elec into something of a decent tank mage then I would end up sort of doing the Tankers role then gazumping all the endurance a mob has for survivability because a Defender increases the level of support I can provide. There are tonnes of reasons and until the official source that told me its ranged/support tells me otherwise Blasters are going to always be ranged/support.


In groups I expect blasters to use the best tools for the moment, this could mean as it does for me that the primary gets used alot. It's not like any blaster is forced to need the secondary most of the time.

A group could be 40+ ft wide and still be sprayed by bullets with boost range.

Latest upgrade is Steampunk, AR/NRG looks like one of those that fits the bill.

It ain't always about the best ST, AR does great AoE/s without having to lose an endurance bars worth of end. With conserve energy you can afford to worry about endurance management less for greater recharge too so overtime you do even greater aoe dps.