GhostDawg

My problem isn't with the quants. My problem is with the fact that PB/WS power and utility don't warrant it. Never did. In the old days the idea of a ranged class with shields was verboten. So they threw quantum kryptonite at it. In the modern age you have a ranged class with shields, status protection, and no kryptonite. They're called Sentinels. And they're not considered game breaking.

Thanks folks. You've given me a couple ideas.

Even though my favorite classes are Blaster, Tanker, and Sentinel I have at least one toon of every AT. Including 3 Masterminds. My first MM back on live was Thugs/FF, so I had some idea of what force field was like. Thing was thugs have way more damage capacity than bots. Between bubbles and bodyguard I don't die a lot. My frustration lies with the sucktastic damage. At first glance one would say that I have outsized expectations on damage because I'm a blaster main. Not true. I've played mid and low damage builds into the late game. But my FF/Bots guy.... I fall asleep waiting for stuff to die. There are things to like about the build. Bots are durable and somewhat self sustaining and make good body guards. Much easier to manage then my Ninja/Dark build. (Which I like because it kills fairly quickly) I don't want to scrap the toon. I'm about to hit level 41 with him. I was wondering if anyone had a Proc heavy build I could try that might make the build less painful. Thanks.

Depends on your build. When I tank I take it, but these days spawns die so quickly it isn't needed as much.

Thanks for keeping things afloat and working so diligently to recover from the recent outage. Much appreciated. Not only did you guys give us our home back, you go to the mat keeping it stable.

Yeah I don't really farm. So I guess I'll tank it.

I concur with much of what you say here. I have a Rad/Atomic blaster built with maybe 32% positional defense and quite a bit of S/L/E resistance. I run clarion for status protection and holds, stuns and immobiles to control the battlefield a bit. I pretty much live in Melee with her and just vaporize most spawns before they can get out of hand. Things were a bit hairy pre-clarion, but that's only because I had to re-toggle one power after hitting a break-free. Point being, you don't absolutely HAVE to cap defense to be effective. On the other hand I do have a Pistols/MA blaster that does have capped defenses. The things I can do with her are amazing. I rarely have to worry about getting mezzed, because they don't hit. On the rare occasion when they do I can use the built in break free power that Martial has and get back to slapping mobs around.

Basically... (Prepares to be taunted) All Tankers. (At first). They just didn't do it for me. I couldn't force myself to play one past level 16 or so. My first tank like toon to get to 50 was a SS/EA brute. EA sucked back then but I liked the Fury mechanic. I was leveling a WP/SS Tanker when the live servers came down. Got him to level 41 largely because I liked SS. Now I have a 50+17 Elec/Elec/MU Tanker that I enjoy immensely and a LV 20 Fire/Fire Tanker that I'm considering taking into the late game. A few other sets intrigue me, and I'd like to do something with SS. Maybe shield or willpower again. The 3 sets I'll never play? ICE, Dark, Stone. Don't care for the grafx on ICE and Dark. And Stone... Grafx and movement penalties are a problem. But I might look into taking speed of sound from experimentation and paring it with Stone. Maybe.

I'm running an Invul/DM brute. It's like easy mode for sheer survivability.

Elec/Elec/MU because I can laugh at my three most hated villain groups. Carnies, Malta, and Awakened. My build is weird in that I actually took Rune of Protection. Yeah I know not optimal. But it is fun. I roll in grab some aggro... use energize if I have to. Then RoP if things get hairy. Then barrier if that doesn't do the trick. by the time barrier wears off energize is up. In a pinch use power surge... then cycle barrier before power surge drops, powersink to refill endurance, energize, re-toggle and get back to smashing. I play with a ton of recharge and Electric armor has some built in, so I rarely ever have to use RoP, but it does happen. Even though Elec Armor provides some PSI protection, it's not bullet proof. Popping RoP puts me near the cap. I'm fairly unkillable and I can dish some serious AoE damage. My only real complaint is that single target damage is a bit low.

Seriously, taking the recent tanker changes at face value... which is better Fire/Fire Tanker or Brute?

Good point.

I would say that fighting an AV is HIGHLY situational as you can simple choose not to solo the vast majority of them.

It just so happens that the "arrest" is of the cardiac variety. Not our fault.

Blasters don't have an identity crisis. They are about damage at ANY position. Melee, range, PBAoe, Aoe you name it, they bring the pain. If they weren't meant to be able to get up in your face they wouldn't have powers like bone smasher and eagle's claw. If you want to know what a pure ranged damage dealer feels like try a sentinel. Blasters were made to go pew pew, boom, and smash face. So of course that means you could build a purely ranged blaster and still be effective, but nothing says you can't mix it up.

Could you post that build?

Personally I see a couple of huge gaps. Your ranged defenses are way too low not to have a reliable status protection method. You could add clarion which can be made perma at the expense of barrier. Sure you can debuff enemy accuracy, but that means you should probably drop reactive for diagmetric. I'm trying to build out a dark/dark blaster myself on the test server and so far I gotta say I'm underwhelmed. But then, I might just be doing it wrong.