StratoNexus

Always run past the first (or first few mobs), into the middle of the spawn. On your way by, you may want to take a quick whack at someone, but never stop at the leading edge. Once in the middle, use a nice AoE. Then move again to the biggest group of strays (or maybe a high priority boss or Lt.) and attack them, then wiggle back to the center of the spawn.

Dance, dance, dance. Keep moving. Wiggle, run around in a small circle, jump over the head of a group to better position yourself and the spawn. Keep moving. Dance, dance, dance.

Switch targets. If you want to hold aggro on a spawn, do not keep smacking the same guy. Attack the guy on the lead edge as you run past. Use an AoE once in the middle. Move to the guys on the left and use a big hitting single target attack. Move back to the middle for another AoE. Switch to a new target and use another attack. Switch to someone else, wiggle a bit and hit the new guy.

Zoom out. Zoom way out. Tankers and controllers who want to lock down aggro need to see as much of the battlefield as possible. If you do not currently play zoomed out, it can take a bit to get used to, but it is worth it. Being zoomed out lets you see when the controller is about to use a control to start the next fight. It lets you see when the blaster is about to wander too close to the next spawn. It lets you see that boss you thought was right behind you running off to kill a defender.

My Kat/Fire is built around high recharge / high damage. No Tough, no Leaping, no -KB IOs. It doesn't die too frequently (yet, only level 41), but I have made good use of RotP.

My Kat/Regen was also a Whirlwinder until they changed the Knock-Up to Knockback. Great fun, I still miss WW (I kept it even after the change, but when they made MoG good, WW was the power that I dropped).

My Nrg/Devices has Hasten and Caltrops 6 slotted. It is great fun. The Ragnorok proc is especially amusing, Caltrops of tripping (I do not have that yet, not quite 50, but a friend does).

If you do it on Test, I'd be all over an all blaster ITF. I've run two and they are loads of fun. Rommy is not all that difficult, especially if you split the healer away from the rest, which is easy to do with blasters. I know we used no nukes, I do not recall if we used any Shivans.

Sadly, my computer was not playing nicely on the one I recorded, all kinds of lag and major slowdown was occurring, so I kept needing to shut-off my recording. But here are the vids, such as they are.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9-nSQf1nhk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYlujv9tfaI

You would probably be better off taking Provoke or your scrapper taunt power to help keep your GF alive.

Remember, not having long fights does not limit Lightning Field. Lightning Field should be helping make fights shorter (it should be slotted for ~85% or more damage). It is not about how much it does in each fight, its about how many fewer attacks you need because LF has removed enough health from enemies to require one less attack to defeat them.

That said, vs solo spawns, you usually have to start the fight in melee to see that effect. If you plan on ranging mostly, I'd really recommend dropping LF or only use it to help keep bosses endurance drained and for the extra damage vs the hard target (that way you do not need to have it toggled except in boss fights).

I want to make it clear that I have zero issue with someone not liking Lightning Field. I also want to make it clear that Lightning Field is not very good if you do not spend most of your time in melee range.

However, Lightning Field IS good on fast killing teams and is a great contributor to making a team kill fast.

Large damage auras are actually much better on teams normally, due to the larger number of spawns and the larger number of slivers they eat away.

Obviously, if you stay at range a fair amount of time, then they are not good, but they are very good on teams if you melee mostly.

I am a big fan of Power Mastery. I have it on all three of my level 40+ defenders.
Power Build Up + Short Circuit = whole spawn disabled
PBU + Tesla Cage = enemy held for a long time
PBU + Fort = mega defense for that ally
PBU + Bubbles = mega defense for multiple allies
PBU + Transference = overkill (although maybe vs +4s it might be needed)
PBU + Aim + FS + SC + BL + Thunderous Blast = Sparkly, crackly goodness.
Temp Invlun helps my Kin withstand damage long enough to get off FS and Transfusion.
Soon it gets Force of Nature. As much fun as I have with Repel on my Kin/Elec/Power, FOCE is probably too good for me to pass up (and pop a blue and get my end back with Transference is going to make it virtually painless).

Electric Mastery would be a great fit as well.
Power Sink is a great end recovery tool
SC + PS = whole spawn disabled
Shocking Bolt + Tesla Cage = held boss
Charged Armor looks cool and gives great resists

Psychic Mastery
Mass Hypnosis is a great soloing tool and its radius is enormous, although Sparky could ruin it (which is not an issue if you skip him). The DoT nature of SC and BL can also cause some issues if you are not careful, they are pretty fast DoTs as DoTs go, but if you use SC, you will need to wait a few seconds before using MH.
Dominate + Tesla Cage = held boss
Telekinesis can disable a whole spawn, and with Recovery Aura running you do not have to worry about its end cost.
Mind Over Body is like Charged Armor, although Psi is less common than Energy.

Just to add and perhaps clarify, in each individual fight Lightning Field will not be doing a ton of damage, but over the course of several fights in a mission it will do appreciable damage.

In each individual fight it will usually do meaningful damage. Meaningful does not necessarily mean a large amount; what it means is that the small amounts it does do will finish off enemies, therefore saving you from needing regular attacks (or take off the first 15% of an enemies health, and save you a regular attack that way).

Damage auras, especially ones with a 20 foot radius, have a tendency to really eliminate those enemies that would otherwise be standing with slivers of health. Taking out the slivers is both an offensive boon, as well as a defensive aid.

Can't you drag some 5th column or Romans into the fight?

Thank you for the response. Damn, I really wanted you to convince me, but you echoed back what I was seeing.

Sorry for the sidetrack, but I am interested in this particular statement.

What situations do you find Melt Armor useful in? I am considering taking it on my Fire/Fire/Flame blaster, but I have to drop Blazing Aura in order to do so (which accounts for ~11% of my damage output over the course of an evening).

My experience with it on test has not been good, but I have been all solo or on small-mid size teams (although the small teams were facing larger spawns thanks to the new difficulty slider). Since I really like the animation and sound, I want to be talked into this power, so I should be an easy sell.

Archery encourages you to obliterate from 40+feet away. Archery gets its big hitter at lvl 6 and it can be fired from 80 feet.

Electric has similar issues early, but it gets a great ranged AoE early (ok, so does Rad, but Irradiate is so shiny), so it does not have to get into the baddies faces, although SC can encourage that behavior (I think I am hopelessly in love with PBAoEs). I have gotten good use out of SC in the early levels, but only when teamed. SC also used to drain spawns by itself, so the set was designed with massive mitigation early, and has never been compensated for losing that advantage. So, yeah, Electric has issues too.

Rad tells you at lvl 2 to run into the middle of the spawn, its where blasters belong! Its different for a defender who has a primary dedicated to mitigation. I truly believe Rad needs something, but since I will usually play with a tanker and a few defenders, I will be perfectly content if it is decided that Rad is more a teaming set, get your mitigation from teammates.

I am just gald I had decided to go with Hasten in my Rad/Fire build, that will alleviate the 4 and 8 second recharge issue eventually.

My Ar/Men is in their mid twenties. I have kind of lost interest, because I have seen his amazing AoE damage already. Granted, Full Auto would add even more greatness, but everything already dies so fast and does so from range. It really is a sweet build and should make a great farmer at 50.

So many alts, so little time and I16 has so many more I want to play.

I think the idea is that the Shield scrapper is already getting more than enough mitigation from the secondary, so a hold is not needed. Ring of Fire is actually quite an effective damage tool, and it works on AVs to keep them from running away like the pansies they are.

No, it wasn't. The paragraph before the one I quoted was a direct response to a statement regarding the availability of powers which mitigate status effects before level 28. The paragraph I quoted was a general summary of your position that defender diversity makes it difficult to find "the right" buff for defenders. If you had intended it to be linked more directly to the previous paragraph, you made a very bad choice of an opening sentence, which links the quoted paragraph with an entirely different point in an entirely different post.

I think you should reassess your opinion. You were quite clearly downplaying the deleterious nature of status effects vs the majority of defenders. You were not merely pointing out that many defenders have powers which aid them mitigating status attacks, you were flat out stating that, "You have a small percentage experiencing issues with status effects." No claims of removing context are accurate, you had moved on from your previous paragraph and were making a much more general point, and I think you went too far.

All that being said, I agree with your position that status effects are a deleterious, but manageable and appropriate weakness.

I disagree. Most defenders have a way to make their low damage tolerably better. While I find the level of damage for defenders quite enjoyable, I have come to believe that even with resistance debuffs or self damage buffs, defender damage is just too low for most people to find them an enjoyable AT.

I believe that most people are turned off from playing even Rad, Dark, TA, Storm, etc., because they feel their blasts are ineffectual. I do not believe for a minute that FF and Empathy are the exception, rather, they are the extreme low end as opposed to the moderate low end of all the others.

Keep in mind, I am not just talking about damage while soloing here. I am also not just talking about all defender teams. I am also not talking just about small to mid-size teams. I am also not just talking about large "balanced" teams. I want to talk about all scenarios, although I would give extra weight to the most typical scenarios, if I knew what they were. I currently give extra weight to small to mid-size teaming, because I believe that is the most common scenario, but I do not rule out the other scenarios in my evaluations. Defender damage needs to be perceived as valuable across more scenarios than it is, IMO.

I am also interested in seeing your datamining or scientific surveys which show "Defenders with primaries which do improve damage output (seven, out of nine existing primaries) consistently show solid performance, and when paired with secondaries with Aim (excluding Kinetics, since the damage cap can potentially render Aim's buff useless) or -Res perform very well."

You forgot dead (although with new Epic powers, even that won't stop some). I am going to believe you are joking with this paragraph, because the other option lowers my opinion of you dramatically.

Considered excellent by whom? Me? I have already decided I do not count. You? You probably think like me when it comes to defender blasting; WE DON'T COUNT. Unless, of course, many more people think like we do than I perceive.

But even I cannot argue that defenders have amazing AoE damage output. They are serviceable, useful to a team, and good. They are not amazing, maybe great in the best case scenarios, but not amazing (over time; they can have some nice AoE bursts in one spawn, but those involve at least one long recharge power, think Disruption Arrow, OSA, RoA, as I am sure you are aware).

How about no? Sonic Attack's potential single target damage is only realized against harder targets. I happen to believe that they represent a very small part of the game. The part of my post you quoted was quite clear, let me repost it here and add some bolding for clarity:
Are you being intellectually dishonest here? When discussing damage output for an AT in regards to their perceived performance vs. content, what metric would be used that doesn't include TIME? Choosing not to play a defender is probably being done by many people because it takes too much TIME to defeat foes or because they feel like their secondary is not helping their team defeat foes in less TIME. What on earth would I be talking about if not damage over a set period of TIME?

You actually wrote:
OK. I concede your point. If we discuss this with the primary metric that matters, I am correct.

Possibly. I have seen enough non-FF and non-Emp complaints to make me a doubter. I have also seen very few people argue for "blaster level damage output out of the box", I think that is a characterization you are using to smear people who wish for a damage increase.

Apparently, there is a range of damage that you are unaware of, because other ATs can reach it, while defenders can't. The ability to solo team size spawns is not solely linked to damage output, otherwise blasters would be better at it than they are. Other ATs can blow through those spawns faster than defenders, even the best defenders, which means there is a level of damage defenders just do not reach. This is that whole TIME factor again. Sure, a good defender player can fight off many of the same challenges that other ATs can, but the defender would go faster if their buff/debuffs were being used by those other ATs.

Keep in mind, I am not stating that defenders should have the same damage capability as the high damage ATs. I am merely stating that those other ATs have enough separation from defenders currently, that a 23% base damage increase to defenders will not cause people to ignore scrappers, brutes, dominators and blasters (although the new difficulty slider may make people percieve blasters differently). Yes, those ATs might lose some population to defenders, but any population shift to defenders will come from all ATs, not just the high damage ATs and I am advocating change because I want to see defender population increase (and with defenders being more awesome, perhaps that will help get new players interested and interested for longer).

I am sure there are already defenders who have soloed multiple AVs at once. Are defenders who solo GMs and AVs recieving out-of-balance in game rewards? You want to restrict the whole AT based on what happens in an outlier case that is a miniscule part of the game and that is not even causing a reward per time imbalance.

My position is that all defenders could use an increase in damage. My position is that a 23% increase in base damage will not make defenders overpowered. My position is that more people would play and have fun with defenders if they had a 23% base damage increase (and scrapper HPs), but it will not relegate the other ATs to also-rans that are ignored in favor of defenders.

This is really a side topic, but I disagree with your position. I believe blasters have much more variability in style and capability than you realize. If you wish to discuss this further, feel free to PM me or start a thread in the blaster forums, that way we do not clutter up this topic.

As you wish. I tend to relegate AV and GM soloing into the interesting, but not representative of the game pile. That type of play is done for fun and for bragging rights, but there are few balance concerns that surround it. It is important to keep in mind, but it is also important to recognize it as an outlier.

If you wish to continue to debate AV/GM soloing as a point against raising defender damage, you are going to have to explain to me precisely what a 23% base damage increase and scrapper level hitpoints are going to do to AV soloers that will be problematic.

Maybe there are people not as good at the game as you? Or do you feel their opinions do not matter? Perhaps we should not balance the game around guide-writing, veteran forumites?

I said:
Luminara responded with:
I want to make sure we are clear here. I am stating that many brutes, scrappers, blasters, dominators, masterminds, stalkers and some tankers will solo through missions at a much faster pace than a Rad/Sonic defender. You feel I need datamining and scientific surveys in order to defend that position.

Your experience leads you to beleive that Rad/Sonic defenders of various levels will solo through equivalent misisons at approximately the same speed? If so, perhaps our in-game experience and thinking are not as similar as I thought.

I did not say the majority of defenders. I said many. Please do not assume I am trying to misrepresent or hyperbolize (I think I made that word up, I hope its meaning is clear) my game experiences to prove my point. It is my game experiences (among other things) that have made me believe my point, just as yours seem to lead you to believe I am wrong.

I agree that the majority of defenders will blast. I also believe the majority blast ineffectively, due to poor slotting and sub-optimal choices on which blasts to take and use, but I wouldn't care about that, if I felt they were having fun. Many times I do think they are, but many times (too many times) I believe they are not. I do not have legitimate evidence, just my experience.

I will balance your experience vs. mine and decide that many defenders blast and many do not and of those that do, many aren't really sure why they do.

Actually, I like to mix up which defender primary I mention. Simply repeating Rads and TAs over and over gets boring. I like the snorting at Kins and Stormies though, very evocative. Sorry, I skipped out on mentioning Cold, TA, Dark, and Sonic in the post you were responding to, but I assume you have a general level of understanding of which defender sets can improve their own damage. You keep telling me you do and mentioning that 7 of 9 can. I will attempt to be more precise in the future, but I really find it a pain to type out when the meaning should be clear. I apologize for the confusion.


Are you serious? It helps vs. burst damage and would improve both the amount regnerated and healed. It will help over the course of a mission, because when they start fighting a new spawn at half, that half is larger and the mitigation you mention will be more effective to get it back to full.


It helps them defeat minions and Lts more readily. The most common types of enemies they will face.


I believe the real problems people have with all defenders are speed through missions (caused by slow killing, endurance issues, and difficulty remaining alive) and the contribution of their blast set on teams. Therefore, increasing base damage and HPs will address the primary issues I believe all defenders have.

Your belief in the vast diversity of defender issues because all defenders are different is simply your belief. Or do you have access to data mining or scientific surveys which prove your faith?

You are not, except I forgot 6 second recharge was scale 1.32. I was thinking it was Scale 1. So your X-Ray Beam line is what I want for that, but NB would be ~.9 to 1 DS in my mind.

Thank you for pointing that out, I edited both of my previous posts to reflect that.

Other than soft capped range defense, Hover, and the ability to immob the hard enemies so they stayed at range, he had pretty much no mitigation at all!

I disagree. The blast sets of defenders actually are quite handy at helping to mitigate damage, more people just need to understand that they should be using them. I think a damage increase would encourage that behavior.

The standard argument that people use to say that controllers are better than defenders actually is exactly that they can accomplish multiple tasks. They control aggro, buff/debuff, and even do respectable damage is the usual line of reasoning.

I understand what you are saying, I am simply disagreeing with your premise that blasting is not interesting enough of a secondary role to make people want to play defenders. I think it is, but I think it needs more OOMPH to attract those people. If I felt more defender damage would be a balance concern, then I might have to look elsewhere for a change (simply making the attacks more end efficient, for example would solve my personal minor gripes). But since I think the damage can be buffed without causing a problem, I'd rather not change the focus of the AT as it currently stands.

Well, I just like to switch it up now and again. Next time I will use Dark defenders and after that I might use TA.

Agreed. That is why I would boost corruptors as well.