ok ok here we go, the official City of Heroes definition of a blaster:
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The Blaster is an offensive juggernaut, This hero can deal a ton of distance from a distance. But the Blaster must be careful, because he's somewhat fragile compared to other heroes. The Blaster can't stand toe to toe with most villains at melee rangefor long. His best defense is a great offense!
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Now here's where I get confused... as a fire energy blaster, my most powerful moves are Blaze Inferno and Bonesmasher, haven't gotten to total focus yet that's next level. my ranged moves are fire blast, fire ball, fire rain, and blazing bolt... so... TECHNICALLY since I have blazing bolt, and that +Aim/Build up is enough to take down most +2 minions in one shot I can deal a good amount of damage at a distance... but my best offensive moves all have ranges of 20 feet or less... Blaze included...
So by definition, dispite my powersets... I am not a blaster... I do not deal a "ton of damage at a distance"... my melee strength is pretty strong, and I've out melee'd scrappers in some cases so I CAN go toe to toe with opponents... and in my case, a good offense pulls me into melee range, so that is terrible for my defense... the only thing that descritption had right was that I'm squishy...
and there we see the problem, conceptually, blasters by their definition sound excellent... but that's not what we are... In practice we're out ranged out gunned, and under defended, sadly we CAN out punch melee types in many situations, but scrappers also have the higher dmg cap so when properly buffed we can't even do that...
I know tanks and trollers get our ranged move in their epic, do scrappers?