Novacat

The grand majority of blaster defenses come from IO sets. The changes in/after the fall of the original live game, were that minor chipping damage no longer fatally accumulates in ways it never did for anybody else, that firing off your attacks no longer wrecks your endurance more than those with many times your defenses, the first two blasts and that first immobilize in your primary and secondary always working while you're mezzed, massively buffed snipes, and crashless nukes. Blaster survivability until you're covered in endgame bits, is a mix of positioning (often the other word for that is running, especially around corners), damage, and control. You gotta be able to hit for that though, as your offensive output, not some stacked shields and resists, is your first line of defense. Dead things don't hurt you. Aim + Ionize + Inferno SHOULD equal a dead spawn. A single elite boss will not be happy if you start at over 150ft and use the temporary range buff to keep firing after that Blazing Bolt before they can even get started with you. In your case, things getting close should have serious issues hitting you through your Beta Decay, if you've slotted it up a bit. But if they're shooting before you inferno, that's less fun (there's ranged nukes on other sets, but Inferno makes up for that if you can get there) and makes you think of stealth. Even a little stealth goes a LONG way with a blaster; there's nothing we love more than being the one to dictate when and how the fight begins. /Devices for example has their cloak as their sustain (their version of your Metabolic Acceleration has no +recharge or speed but gives defense and stealth), which with pre-emptive non-aggroing smoke grenades lets them walk into the enemy's face and leisurely plant tripmines under their feet. Literally. I will echo some of the suggestions that you try a Sentinel; while they lose a bit of range they're far more of an intermediate step - a "ranged scrapper" with defense sets you already know well (they've their own variants but you probably remember more about them than I've ever learned) while still offering a taste and glimpse of the front-loading, area-loving soft-control screwjobs that are at the core of the blaster game. No snipe, somewhat smaller target caps, and the nukes are a fair bit weaker but recharge a lot faster. OR try a more defensively capable combo. Dark Blasts don't have a 'ball' (more cones) but EVERYTHING in there debuffs to-hit. Ice slows in every way, carries powerful holds (and most epic pools have one more hold to stack with this), and while it has no snipe does offer about as much AoE as Fire did.

A few notes on Bane Spiders to help sell it. Of the three armor passives, Bane Spider Armor is best: On top of the same mez protection as the Crab's, it acts as a half-strength fortification and serum, with a 7.5%(all damage) resistance and hitpoint bonus. Certainly not as good as the trio but for a single power? This also makes fitting that spare wolf armor easier. Unfortunately you're not wrong about the mace beams; at range the Bane is best still used as a Wolf Spider. Their slight range reduction is consistently annoying, including Poison Ray's which stinks of Blaster T3s from the ancient time with their own inexplicable 40ft. I don't use poison ray for that reason (although it's a fairly solid attack up close) but there's room for the Achilles Heel in Single Shot. That utility does shine, though! Cloaking and Placate are versatile and double as melee buffs; the latter granting a few seconds of breathing room while also letting you re-fire a critical shatter or crowd-control mid-fight. Surveillance doesn't aggro, and so can always be up on whatever you need it to be before the fight begins. Web Cocoon's hold is somewhat lonely, but a second stack of -recharge and slow is never bad. From afar, the epic pools will complete you in ways the mace admittedly could not, and you may have a tiny bit more power room to play with than a Crab (albeit due to having more skippable things...) Mu Lightning may not total as much damage as Gloom, but it isn't a DoT. Ball Lightning doesn't carry the -hit, but does pile a little more damage, being a DoT. Their recharge and cost are a bit high, but nothing good slotting won't handle. If you go Mace Mastery, Disruptor Blast IS better than Beam Blast, but the Mace Beam is better than Mace Blast. In that case, Web Envelope will stack stupid amounts with your base Wide Area Web.

For Health I usually try to go for Numina's. Since Health's +regen isn't all that high, a second Heal IO, on top of starting to reach ED, would give a little bit less. 2 Heal IOs = 73.33% regen Numina Heal + Regen/Recovery = 56.96+20=76.96% Regen, plus the +10% recovery and +12% regen doing this nets you. That said I always need to find a place (whether a third slot in health or into another power somewhere) for Panacea's proc as soon as I have it.

Hey every hero's got a hobby. Besides, who else is going to save you in the nick of time from that masked shower-knife killer? Only Binocular Man, who saw what was going on, that's who!

I do feel conditioning is quite underwhelming; it barely even exists by mid-levels. There's also the issue that the soldiers suffer from some serious redraw, and the Bane ranged attacks are just trash, plus none of the ranged attacks can even take advantage of the cloak. The Spider's Bite proc is quite weak and tends to end early; what if instead of the terrorize, all attacks had that instead? Feels like it combined with the minor recovery/regen of conditioning would fill things out nicely.

The Bane Spider Primary's 'Mace Beam' series have a special, glaring badness to them. The T1: Mace Beam, has range 70 instead of 80, and a 2s cast time. You can fire both Single shot (which hits as hard) and Burst(which is even better) together in less time than just Mace Beam alone. Mace Beam Blast is a radius 10 AoE with just over half the damage of a Frag Grenade, and also has Range 70 and a 2s cast time. Mace Beam Volley is a short, relatively narrow (45 degree and 40 length) cone of a little over half the damage of Heavy Burst. Poisonous Ray has range 40 T2 damage, but as a slow, Toxin DoT (thus VERY heavily resisted by many). Also a 2s cast time. Now none of these are looking all that hot compared to the faster animating gun abilities, especially on the AoE front. But then the AT rubs it in with the epic, whose Mace Blast(yup, same name) and Disruptor Blast (AoE radius 15) are both stronger and further-reaching... not that I'd ever take it over other alternatives like Mu or Soul (who animate faster and aren't half smash damage).

One that hasn't been mentioned yet: A soldier of Arachnos. The animations aren't always the flashiest (but an audibly satisfying amount of quick BRRTTT and plenty of grenades), feels like a Bane Spider has most of those boxes checked. You have decent melee, decent range, can do a LOT of AoE, you can cloak, placate and critical-beatstick. Your bane spider armor is an excellent single-power package that offers some mez resistance, bonus hp, and some protection to all damage types. You have the Leadership auras built into your secondary set and they're less end-intensive to boot. You can even go for some summons. I like using the soul mastery epic to go with it; Dark Obliteration is nice, fast and negative damage, Gloom is a strong single target addition to your ST ranged lineup... You have a relatively resilient character with alright support (and plenty of opportunities for -res, from procs to venom grenade and surveillance), that has little difficulty handling streets and story missions whether solo or supporting teams. Indeed, their lack of a revamp in the past few years leaves them lagging in the highest endgame stuff, and they do need a bit of love in that department (a stronger inherent would be a good start), but they're quite comfy and enjoyable at the casual work.

I think the problem is that it doesn't seem to address the issue of AVs ending up with 85+% resistance to the mechanic anyway. Shock is readily showing itself against minion/Lts (and as long as you aren't all +4/x8 bosses too), being almost a mini-scourge to things you shut down with short-circuit... But that's exactly the issue: "to things you shut down." They're 'already dead' so to speak. If you'd need two corruptors with high Endmod slotting to bring an AV down to no END by the time he'd be dead anyway had they focused on damage or at least a tiny amount of -regen instead, the fight would be over, not "starting to give a bonus". Elec blaster doesn't get as much of the secondary effect to work with, and shock can't start happening at all, 0%, if you cannot bring it under 80%. That's where it's still lacking - one of the original problems of Elec.

If your team is taking a bit of time to prepare for a pull or major fight, putting down Trip Mines is a great way to wait around. Rounding a corner or right near a doorway are great places to either take-advantage-of or create half-assed chokepoints. For major engagements however, try to coordinate with the tanks/pullers/whatever for the minestack location, to maximize the effect. There may be a particular place they'd like you to put them in.

In the sense of "it is an auto-power and should remain one" I agree, but not in the sense of "it's fine as is because it is auto". Auto-powers are not quite as special as back when they came out - by the time IOs first became a thing, to say nothing of the Incarnate system, we were far better capable of reducing and recovering the costs of defensive toggles. So it's an issue of "this is far too penalized for what it is". This is compounded here where being held won't drop all your defensive toggles. Body Armor could use a little catching-up. I'm not saying it has to be as good as the gold standard of auto-powers; Bane Spider Armor... but right now all the other epic pool defenses are ALSO "stronger IO mule that's easy on the blue bar and doesn't get turned off". I would say several, just not fully each one. If I remember my numbers right, just on recharge/damage, calculated at half the actual recharge "because epic pool", for 240s (thus 120 for the formulas) the LRM should have a base damage around 305 unmodded. Obviously this would be too damaging (puts overcharge to shame) but also still too long and unwieldy. Best to bring it a little bit from several aspects rather than one big fix then. Give it a base of 175 damage, recharge 160s, and drop the animation time to 3.5s with 2s interruptible. That would leave it slightly weaker than the recharge formula would suggest for the new "80" second timer, and well below real nukes, while still offering a useful long range opener or followup to slow snipes. It would still be "below standard" according to the math, but I doubt anyone would call it a trash heap or overpowered then.

The attacks were relentless, both on Sanctuary, and once it returned within a few days of Ascension starting up.

They had some new AT frameworks they were working on that were mostly playable (they didn't all have ATOs yet but usually had fully functional powers and inherents) such as the Enforcer and Paladin which were out (there were more being made or in testing) as well as a few power sets like poison and earth blasts, earth manipulation, illusion armor and several others. They'd also gotten some old ones whose origins I'm less clear about, like the patron master, working pretty well, and were in the process of reworking the freakshow one too.

It actually depends on a few things. Some set combinations are particularly conducive to blapping. Two reasons: Dead things can't hurt you, and some of your most powerful hits and mezzes are likely to be one and the same - a melee attack somewhere. Now obviously a Blaster must take their sustain, put some slots in there; Regen and END depend on it and a blaster with no go juice is a blaster about to lose their battle of attrition. Tactical Arrow for example has the glue, the EMP, happily stays at range, and has a very good spread of little buffs. It wants you to stay afar, and gives you a rather good start towards doing so in exchange for the sheer power blaps offer. Probably won't take everything though - if you've got other holds the set gives you another to freeze up, but if your primary and epic have none, it's rather skippable. But look at Darkness. Where's it the most effective? Soul Drain and Dark Consumption are PBAoE, Smite and Midnight Grasp are pretty good melee smackers. What if you've got a nuke or judgement that matches going to to toe on top of that? Might not be long before the safest place for you to be is right next to a boss as it stumbles unconsciously, debuffed and with you freshly topped off from draining all his friends. Who are dead now. They're dead and it's your fault. If you've got Overcharge or another area Disorient, you're going to cause some real trouble. One thin gthough: By endgame that scrapper will outpace the Blaster and be *significantly* harder to kill. IOs can bring you up, but while you try to softcap the blaster, the scrapper's hunting AVs on a cheaper build.

It's definitely not a set of toggles that can reasonably or realistically be used together in pre-incarnate SO setups. Tough is also ... not that great, and if you've got a resistance power in your epic pools you're best of slotting that one up with tough just... left by the wayside on the way up to Weave. a dead power slot from having to grab a prereq, basically. That said, the addition of a proper defensive stack should have a decent effect on sets that were lacking in safety on their own. It may do little to aid Water, Ice and Dark, but may allow Fire and Beam to lose one or two deaths from their safety rating.

Charged shot has lower DPS and slightly lower DPA than Single Shot. As filler it's just less good since there's a longer cast time, but the other issue is their effects when striking a Disintegrating target. Single Shot offers -75% regen - not much but another nice little addition. Charged has the weakest of all Disintegrate bonuses; an 11%-ish tick.

Oh no I'm talking about blast T2s. The primaries. Rarely is the T2 a part of any of my main rotations, and nowhere is this truer than BR. Charged Shot has the worst of all on-disintegrate bonuses. May as well get the -regen% from Single Shot If Mezzed, Single and ENA both fire faster, cheaper, and come back up faster. Both have better DPA and DPS than Charged Shot (just a little). A fine choice for finishing off health slivers too Penetrating's basically always better. Piercing Lancer are slightly better options without Disintegrate, and vastly superior with it up.

You could... but I don't take T2s for most blast sets in the first place. ENA can slot a bunch of procs too, and ESD as well.

Primaries: 1) Beam Rifle: Though lacking a 'standard' Radial, Overcharge makes up in part for that. A fine grab-bag of effects with an excellent T3 for pairs or lines of three in Piercing Beam. 2) Water Blast: Though sans-nuke Water has powerful AoE with plenty of soft control. Pair it with some solid blaps to shore up the ST deficiencies and you've got one hell of a package. 3) Fire Blast: The old, tried tested and true classic. When your friends all have control sets and you're really only there for genocide. Simple, straightforward, effective Fire Blast. Secondaries: 1) Tactical Arrow: A powerful suite of self-buffs (including even a bit of mobility) for anyone who wants to stay away from the action. Packed with goodies and a good T1 to help the lack of blap. 2) Atomic Manipulation: The other end of the spectrum. Brutal in your face abilities with a top-class Sustain and one of them 'screw you' toggles. If you don't know what to pick, try this beast. 3) Devices (new and improved): More of a soloing kit, Devices carries wonderful utilities before and in battle, and hey even a cruddy pet's a decent addition to any arsenal. BR/TA: My main for a long time. No need to get in close so perfect if you want to hover-blast. You've got mobility, you've got recharge, you've got defense and accuracy, and a tool-kit to make all sorts of fun things with. Ice Arrow may be skippable for this combo: you'd need a second hold from epics or you'll have nothing to stack with. Water/Atomic: They're slowed, they're on the floor, and everyone in that whirlpool that's not a held and dying minion suffering from Beta Decay... is getting positron-fisted to death while wondering where that geyser exploded from.

Body Armor - all of Munitions actually - has been in a terrible spot for a long time. The Sustains and change to toggles both sank Body Armor's value further over time as well. A small HP buff could work; several examples of auto-power armors are easily found on the Spiders: the Bane armor in particular offers 7.5% to all damage (crab doesn't get psi there) and a bit of extra HP. It also gives a solid base of Mez protection magnitude. If Body Armor offered even half of those numbers, it would be very much worth taking a look at.

The range bonus from using a snipe for roughly the base recharge time of it makes ranged nukes a bit more attractive. Beam/Tactical-Arrow is a good set of ranged abilities and self-buffs, and while it lacks a regular radial, it has full range on the nuke. So even unslotted, opening with a slow snipe from 120ft immediately allows Overcharge to be your followup, probably with Piercing Beam aimed so as to kill or damage and -res at least three things. Range bonuses from the ATO (among others) will increase this effective range as well.

A real *upgrade* for slot usage, would be UP. turn all those knockdowns into ups.

Early on not as well as the melees. There's just no getting around the fact that the melee ATs all do as much or nearly as much damage with multiple times the survivability. Your slows and other soft controls lose most of their effect against those targets too so you can't expect the AT to be recharging 2/3 as quickly like the normal things you web grenade. With full IOs and incarnate gear, you'll eventually be able to. Your advantages are generally better suited to taking on large crowds, but you can also keep yourself at a bit of altitude if you take Hover, and can thus at least avoid some of the nastier melee attacks. Some sets, like Beam Rifle or Temporal Manipulation (among others) will also offer a bit of -regen, something that adds up rather nicely over time in such long fights.

It's not just LRM. Body Armor was already by far the worst of all the epic pool armors back when being an auto-power that won't toggle-off the moment anything hits you with anything of any magnitude ever meant something. Back when your endurance was in the dumps from no IOs or Sustains if you held some toggles. Now, it's not only the lowest (on average less than half the values) of any of the epic resistances, it's also covering one or two TYPES less than the others as well: Body Armor: Resist 8.75% S/L Dark Embrace: Resist 19.25% S/L, 10.5% Negative/Toxic Frozen Armor: Defense 10.5% S/L, Resist Fire 7% Cold 21% Charged Armor (both sets): Resist 19.25% S/L/Energy Fire Shield: Resist 19.25% S/L, 14% Fire, 7% Cold Temp Invulnerability: Resist 21% S/L Shark Skin: Resist 19.25% S/L/Cold Scorpion Shield: Defense 10.5% S/L 7% Energy, Resist 12.25% Toxic So even Temp Invulnerability, which also has just Smash/Lethal and which no one takes because no one takes Force, is 2.4x as effective. Meanwhile Charged Armor offers 2.2x the resistance, but also applies it to Energy - another common lategame damage type.

It's written right at the top. You're a terrible parent.

Or you can 4-slot Sting and 2-slot Experienced Marksman for +5% range to everything. A little bit of interrupt reduction found in both those sets will bring the long snipe time down a fair bit anyways. Snipes make a great opener nowadays since the +50% range buff loaded onto them will affect your cones, ranged nukes, balls and all the other stuff. Just from firing off Snipe at a boss first (while it's charging up pick a target better suited to your cone angle) without any enhancements or anything, with nothing slotted at all anywhere, you'd still turn your Full Auto into a 120ft affair.