Novacat

After noticing in-game that many have never been made aware of the changes and capabilities of Blasters in the i24+ timeline, I thought it might be a good idea to put together a little information package. So what has changed since the days as the "most under-performing Archetype under all possible metrics"? What reason might one have to take old AT for a spin? Is Offensive Juggernaut no longer sarcastic? As it turns out, more or less. Offense The modern blaster has had a few slight increases, most notably to Snipes and Nukes Snipes lose their entire interruptible portion of the cast time if you have 22% or more To-Hit. This is indicated by a yellow border around the power itself. Not only would that make it more usable in actual combat, it flat out shortens the casting time to make a powerful attack that hits nearly as hard as your Tier 3 with a faster animation. Energy's Sniper Blast then deals just a bit less base than Power Burst while casting slightly faster than Power Blast - and the range has not been shortened in the least! Nukes were standardized and had their crashes removed. The top ends of their damage has been substantially lowered, but they deal it much more reliably (old nukes could have 10+ attack rolls per target leading to depressing RNG screwjobs), more often (recharge time on most has been lowered) and without screwing your recovery and mana-bar. This was sorely needed as their old versions had become completely obsoleted by Incarnate Judgements - and now instead they're something to 'alternate' between to wipe out spawns. Other team-members have one judgement, but while it may not hit 40 targets like the other one, you start off with two. Another change for quality-of-life is the Tier 3: Most blaster primaries had the quick light attack, the medium medium attack, and the slow heavy attack. Like Snap Shot < Aimed Shot < Blazing Arrow, or Power Bolt < Power Blast <Power Burst. Problem is, that third one had a 40ft range "because screw-you that's why". They're all 80ft base now Defenses Yeah no. Still squishy. The majority of blaster defense and resistance values come from Power, Epic/Patron and IO sets. You can Weave and Maneuvers your way with IO sets helping along to maybe the low teens in everything except Smashing/Lethal resistance (that one you can easily get into the mid 20s or higher) before that Hybrid-slot Incarnate "Support" core, but that's still gonna take some toggling Sustain Well now here's where things do get a bit different survival-wise. One of the big changes was the implementation of the "sustain" series of powers. Every set has, by at the latest level 20 (Frigid Protection's at 10 and Energize is at 16 but most it's the level 20 itself) some sort of health and endurance aid. Very significant at that. On average, if it gives +Recovery and +Regen, you're looking at +225% Regeneration and +50% Recovery. Contrast that to a base of 40% Regen and 25% Recovery for Health and Stamina. Now the Sustains DO only let you enhance half of that bonus but that's still way ahead AND a second set of powers to run against ED limits. Others instead of +Regen offer a measure of Absorb, which you still want to slot with heals because heal/absorb's combined now anyways. This lets you shrug off a good amount albeit without as much recovery from what goes through. Plus each has its own effects. Tactical Arrow's Eagle Eye gives +Perception and +Accuracy. Devices Field Operative no longer drains endurance but gives it instead while cloaking you. Old functionalities were improved or kept as-is, not lost. Psychic retained Drain Psyche as its model by the way, so while many Sustains are toggles, some Sustains are clicks which give their bonuses for a minute or so. What this means is that while you're still going down like a minion from focused fire, blasters now have far greater capability to keep their blue bar up in longer fights and will recover far more effectively from the occasional AoE or chip-damage crossing their way in bigger battles even if the defender's not paying attention to you specifically. It also means whatever level it's available at is more or less locked-in as far as choices go, because that's way too much stuff in just one pick to skip for very long. When soloing in particular, those 2-3 whites that hit you only three times out of ten will now be facing off against a regen% reminiscent of Regeneration the powerset (just the % though, not the other defenses) Overall No getting around it: You're still picking a dedicated squishy. Purple Elite Bosses can still crumple you like wet paper if you don't (or can't) pop inspirations like a crack addict. But, you can now truly say you deal decent damage (with improved snipes and nukes) for the whole fight (thanks to basically triple-stamina) and what minor outbursts by enemies that you get caught in while playing with a team; things which used to be dire faceplant threats - are now something you can recover from fairly quickly and even sometimes tough out a little. Blapping is still a good idea - better than ever even if you're built for it - and some of the new sets like Atomic offer some very nice self-buffs and even mild mez-resistance. Fancy a self-toggle that's practically a copy of Accelerate Metabolism, anyone?

Although it's worth noting that Blasters don't have to be set in stone either. I24 was already estimated to be a lowball set of fixes to refine upwards later - and that was under the assumption that no one else got buffed to widen the gap again.

Probably got added hand-in-hand with the range loss, but yeah, definitely unnecessary. It's already just "less positioning" and no longer "ranged", having slightly lower overall damage even with Offensive Opportunity up than blasters too... The lower number of targets will really drive down the DPS in endgame when playing in groups.

First, there's a knockback-to-knockdown unique you can take advantage of, and good placement (or flying) can mitigate most of the team-unfriendliness of knockback. So even in a group, it's not necessarily something to worry about. The one thing you'll want to maybe reconsider is that /elec (as well as elec/) do endurance drain, but this is rather... binary. Either they're empty, or they're at full power. And it takes a LOT to empty things especially higher conning Bosses through AVs. So as a secondary, even with Power Sink, unless you're willing to go for Electrical Mastery to support it (and a lot of EndMods) you may have to simply ignore one part of your powers and almost pretend it isn't there unless you've got other electrical (and/or Kinetics) friends. This isn't a problem with your particular combination but rather the electric sets themselves: they're never enough for drain to eventually add up to a proper shut-down all on their own. That said, if you take Electrical Mastery and mod for drain, you can supplement Power-Sink enough to make a difference - maybe take the Preemptive for your Incarnate Interface, and Tempest set's "chance of end drain" as a solo into one or more of your ranged attacks to help round out the drain. Other than that, your main defense (and that of your friends) will be -Hit on all parts of your primary. Between that and Drain, Musculature's Radial Paragon path may be the ideal Alpha slot for you: ups damage (you're a blaster), to-hit debuffs (darkness primary), and endurance modification (stamina, force of thunder, and all of your electrical attacks). For powers, personally I'd take Gloom, Moonbeam (a fast hard-hitter under Aim or yellows or when lots of friends have Tactics up, plus for pulling), and focus on the cones, disorients and point-blank AoEs - you're not really going to be made for the 80ft rangeband, even with some range ups you'd probably around 60ft for at least two of your three cones, and then in things faces with all of your Point-Blanks. The sleeps can work through purple triangles IIRC but need a lot of stacking, so IF you just want to take one of the two, I'd take charged brawl over havoc punch. Do NOT forget Force of Thunder; it's a Disorient/KB with a tiny radius around you but every minute it's where your regen and recovery come from. For more specific stuff though, you'd have to ask an expert. Probably someone here has a far more refined build than my half-assed alt.

That's some serious deep-red slotting though. It's what, +8 worth of enhancement on three to-hit IOs just to make it 16%?

The "blaps" themselves were surprisingly powerful; high damage (though activation times could get a bit high on certain ones) generally paired with a solid Mez. Admittedly though it didn't make up for the nerfs and "let's buff the enemies" of Mr."range is your defense you don't need real defenses" "damage is your defense you don't need range" "ranged damage is your defense you don't need mez protection" "you have range as your defense you don't need to deal more than these other ATs whose damage we're buffing". Just saying the blaps can offensively save you and/or your team from some hurt by in some cases approaching nuke-level damage, though just on a single target.

Are you waiting for the Tank to pick up the aggro properly? If things aren't taunted, they're going to turn to you on the spot with that sort of output, guaranteed. Blasters depend on two things: Targets dying before you die, or someone eating the aggro up for you (punchvokes at the very least). If you're confident in your area attacks brutalizing most of the target group, then you can alpha-strike as the tank/brute/dwarfform jumps in. Otherwise you need to give them a few seconds to take everyone's interest away. SOME will still turn to you as there are target limits to things like area taunts too (and sometimes with two spawns getting aggroed at a time, well, you get the idea) and those you need to kill ASAP.

blizofoz45 : Tactical Arrow has been serving me immensely well. Here's a little review of each power for you since you're starting out: Electrified Net: Range 80 makes this a proper second "Tier 1" attack. It's basically the same as whatever first thing is in most primaries, but with immobilize as its secondary effect, and I believe a slightly higher base accuracy (won't matter in endgame but can make slotting a little easier). I don't actually use my primary's T2 and instead have this and Beam's Single Shot doing the work. Glue Arrow: It's quite the slow. It's longer ranged than Caltrops but does no damage, instead adding a -recharge component to slow down their attacks. Being out of space I had to respec out of it later, but it was quite handy leveling up especially against large groups, so YMMV. At the very least, if you stop using it, it will have gotten you where you are. Ice Arrow: Low damage average-ranged Mag 3 Hold, with -spd and -recharge. You can't really go wrong with this. That said, I didn't have other holds until time came for epics, so this got specced out faster than Glue Arrow. My primary offers Stuns not Holds after all. Someone with another hold who needs a second mezzing dose to overtake elite bosses reliably, like with Tesla Cage, will probably be happy with this one's performance later on. Upshot: It's Build-Up but with some +Recharge speed on it as well. Anything Build-Up-like is good. I don't think I need to go into much detail beyond the flat numbers: For 10s: +20% to-hit, +100% damage, +30% recharge speed on all your powers. Throw all your biggest (or widest) murderings in that little window. Flash Arrow: I love these. A slightly faster casting (if you have no-redraw set at the tailor's) Smoke Grenade. THIS DOES NOT AGGRO. So what you do is you pre-debuff the enemy group's accuracy(mildly but hey) and perception(by like 90%). The group could just sneak by, plant Timebombs (do have stealth up, 90% is not 'right in their face' invis without some stealth), or jump in with like half a second more before they start shooting and a 5-7%ish accuracy debuff for the whole fight (it does last a minute after all). This is in no way powerful, but it's one of those handy versatile little things that's hard to find anywhere else. Eagle Eye: Yes. You can't buff that to-hit boost like Targeting Drone can, but this power's meant for slotting Endurance and Heal stuff anyways. This toggle gives you +Accuracy (yes), perception (matters less often but hey), and acts as a second Health and Stamina while up. It costs no energy, so just remember to turn it back on when it drops for whatever reason. Long ago at 14 and 20 most of us took Health and Stamina (they weren't inherent back then), well, now you can take it again - both of them in one power. Edit: Clarification: As it gives accuracy and not To-Hit, Eagle Eye unlike Targeting Drone, does not count towards perma-snipe. But you're pistols so that doesn't really matter. Agility: This power isn't for the slots, it's for a permanent 20% recharge speed on you. The fact that it makes you jog and fly a tiny bit faster are just cherries on top - I guess you can stuff a hamidon-origin movement thing in there later to help'em out. Doubt you'd have reason to put a 2nd slot in though, you needed the power, not the space. 20% recharge. You're welcome. Gymnastics: Why'd I skip the other? Because the other's your real prize. For now: Gymnastics is a jump-height buff, knockback protection, hold/immobilize/stun duration reductions (against you, don't worry about the ones that you throw out) and a (very mild. what can I say, we're blasters) defense buff all in one. It all rather adds up really. ESD ARROW: What happens when you take a decently ranged targeted area hold with more radius (somewhat) than a fireball, and you stack one of the (possibly THE) strongest endurance drains around? You like holds, it is holds. You like endurance drain, it's got more than Power Sink (also it's ranged not PBAoE). A powerful dual-method shutdown package easily paired with the screwjobs in other sets, just waiting for your slots. And because that wasn't enough, when it hits stuff like Robots, it also causes decent damage too. Because why not. Hope that gives you some hope for your choice secondary set.

Consider however that their HP cap is shared with the lowest lot: 1606.4 as shared with Masterminds, Controllers, Corruptors, Dominators and Defenders. Kheldians and VEATs instead share their cap with the Scrapper.

I'd say there's two reasons why you need the defenses. 1) If you were a blaster you'd still be too squishy: experts and masters of the class and its statistics worried that the buffs to other ATs - even quality-of-life ones - were going to overtake the i24 blaster changes and prevent it from fully reaching... the median performance. In other words it was likely still going to be a bit too squishy to reach the middle of the pack. 2) Sentinels do NOT hit as hard as blasters do. Or scrappers for that matter. So getting high teens low 20s on most defenses and resists just from the powers alone pre-IOs is important due to there being, guaranteed, more return-fire than for blasters. Opportunity, I can finally confirm, does a 5% drop in def/res on targets as soon as the sentinel's hit them, but it's once per sentinel. So it does give the whole team a tiny bit more damage and accuracy if you've at least bothered to toss a lightning-ball their way.

1- The Sentinel appears to have 0.95 multipliers where Blaster/Scrapper have 1.125 for range/melee respectively. Sentinel damage thus comes a smidgen above that of a SOLO defender - it is important to remember Defenders get a damage buff when alone which lowers as teammates get added which makes the numbers seem closer at first glance. That said, Sentinels don't get Build-Up or other such goodies. 2- Slightly lower, but this is correct. We're looking at 17.5% where a Scrapper would get 18.75% 3- That's quite significant. Ball Lightning for example has 40ft, and Sentinels do not have Snipes at all - their snipe powers are instead replaced by a 60ft non-snipe version, so basically a second 'tier 3'. This isn't a bad power since its activation time is usually around Tier 1 (just like snipes with their interrupt portion canceled out by accuracy), but there's no doubt that range here is a QoL affair meant to keep a Sentinel from needing the finer placement of Scrapper AoEs. On that note, their AoE ARE wider by a good margin, being blaster and not scrapper primaries. 4- Yeah honestly it doesn't seem to be doing all that much. It's no Defiance, and it's most definitely not Criticals. Overall, Sentinels need a bit of work. But they're not unviable even as they are. This Archetype is best played as they are by those who would like some wider area coverage on their Scrapper, in exchange for a tiny bit of survivability. Focus heavily on the AoEs to make up for your lower damage - if you thought your Thorns scrapper was not quite crowd-clearing enough perhaps your Water Blast scrapper will fill that void.

1) Unsure. But I believe the offensive opportunity damage buff may be restricted to that particular target, so that may be what's marking it 2) Team did not appear affected. However I would require a quieter scenario than the mass-AE team to get a close look at numbers for allies before/after a shot by the sentinel on a clean enemy. 5% isn't all that much after all. 3) DENIED: Primary attacks build the gauge. Prestige powers such as the lolipop do not. I do not yet know if pool or ancillary attacks can build it yet, but during my tests the bar ONLY rose as a direct result of firing primary attacks.

Non mais le clavier est anglais donc c'est plate d'avoir a faire les accents une alt+ a la fois.

There were two things regarding knockback that were critical to understand. One by the player, the other by teammates. Unfortunately the nature of PUGs ensures one could easily find themselves in a situation where neither knew either. Of course, when soloing, knockback's a very reliable way of taking things out of the fight in some fashion; power-push can put all except an NPC sniper well out of range, and even a purple that flew just 4-5 feet has lost a few seconds of shooting you from something far easier to stack for an energy blaster than stacking hold magnitude. 1) Flight could nearly (or entirely depending on your angle) transform it into team-friendlier knockdown 2) Anything short of a higher-conning Elite Boss or Archvillain that's sent flying can be ignored, it'll probably be dead before it hits the ground. It might even be dead already A hovering blaster could easily place themselves such that if not immobile, the knocks would at least keep things packed around the teammates they should remain packed around. This could avoid worst-case scenarios like a rad-anchor getting flopped across a warehouse while all his buddies lose their debuffs. The knockdown-conversion put a hard stop to the issue either way however.

everything was greyed out for a minute there, but then everlasting showed as green. Still just froze and bumped me back to login by daring to try and click it though.

being hawkeye is suffering

A variety of ranged attacks and heavy armor keeping you alive? With maybe some extras on the side you can pick and choose out of the pools and the Ancillaries? Who else do we know flies around in a set of advanced armor, can craft all sorts of stuff, and uses all sorts of blasts, beams and missiles with the occasional martial arts when he has to?

As a /Dev maining blaster, Erectile Dysfunction was a brutal nerf. Before, one could toe the line, taking out most white minions from six-slotted damage using targeting drone as the accuracy support. Post ED however, the return-fire by groups where the tripmine-combo (leaping backwards with m30 soon as it's planted, with flamethrower queued on landing) could not be used, like anytime one was in a team, made faceplanting an increasingly-harsh reality. The other unenjoyable thing was the removal of everyone's favorite punching-bag: Nazis. The vague cobra-commander cosplayers that were the council were never anywhere near as instinctively enjoyable to massacre as Fifth Columnists had been.

Kilowatt: That is NOT a helpful answer. Karagirl: it probably is the map server or at least the instance you were in (like if in "mercy island 3") that's currently crashed or unavailable (due to overloading beyond paragon's original population maximums). I'm getting this error on all characters at the moment as well.

Ice/Ice (and others) were actual blaster sets, not some hybrid. They shared some powers but even those had different values or details. For example, Electricity Manipulation does share about half its powers with Electrical Melee, but: Electrical Manipulation has a ranged immobilize, a toggle PBAoE DoT, Power Sink, and Shocking Grasp (a single target Hold melee) as its capstone Electrical Melee has different levels for certain powers, offers a melee cone, more PBAoEs including its capstone (a teleport no less), and taunts. Now if someone could mix and match anything, someone who went Shield Defense / Devices would offensively have... Caltrops at level 2, Taser and some pool powers at 4, and then no other offensive abilities until Tripmine at level 28. Even as a tanker you'd need the presence pool just to be able to taunt once in a while and forget levelling without a party to carry you. Meanwhile the Demon Summoning / Fire Control guy would be shutting everything down for the army of damaging pets to run amok.

I'm getting an instantaneous "Cannot Find Map" as well on Excelsior. Torchbearer's just a freeze without going to character select for about 2 minutes, then back to login.

Hybrids as you describe them are not a thing officially. It may be possible to mod things around to add new such archetypes however. They would require their own values though, as there's the ranged/melee multipliers and inherents to take into account.

Flight is Energy Blast's friend. Knockback from above can keep things close to your melees. Or, if they're used to you, they'll understand that whatever you just sent flying will probably be dead before it ever got up anyways. I wouldn't call Sentinel corrupter/defender-like however. It's deeply rooted in just dishing out primary while surviving the return-fire. Maybe more brute-like depending on how the inherent handles in the long-run Some numbers now that the servers are back up: Elec Blast 50 Average Damage Defender Sentinel Blaster Charged Bolts 36.15 52.83 62.56 Lightning Bolt 59.28 86.64 102.60 Ball Lightning 39.04 57.06 67.57 Invulnerability 50 Brute Sentinel Scrapper Res.Phys 7.5% 7% 7.5% Temp.Invuln 22.5% 21% 22.5% Dull Pain(+/Heal) 21.6/43.2 20.5/41.0 21.0/42

Additional comparisons: Sentinels do not have Snipes. Each power is replaced depending on the set but appear mostly to have similar damage and no interrupt, just none of the range Sentinels have reduced range. 80ft attacks in any other ranged set have 60ft here, and a 50ft cone is 40ft base on a Sentinel Sentinel ranged damage is significantly lower than blasters. Sometimes it's 80%, sometimes it's 60%, so you're hitting like a defender in a large group disturbingly often. Sentinel defenses are slightly lower than Scrappers. Just slight; like 18% where a scrapper would get 20% but still a thing Being scrapper and not Blaster secondaries, you must keep your accuracy AND peak-output in mind: There's no build-up, there's no targeting-drone or eagle-eye or shinobi and of course there's no gun-drone or total-focus either. So, overall, it's an odd piece of work at the moment. You're a slightly softer scrapper who gets a bit of range to make placing/targeting attacks a little easier. You get better AoE than a scrapper on many sets, but you lose a lot of damage compared to both blasters and scrappers in exchange. So, not sure how it'll do in the long run when there's other "protections but ranged damage" combinations like the Bane Spider, or when you could just pick a scrapper and move a little more for more damage and more survivability.