Blaster Primary Comparison: Standard Environment Testing

[VV]

First of all, thanks for all this. This is great information. Second, I don't see the need for any additional tests with more stuff added. It might change the results slightly, but not significantly. And the less extras, the better. This is perfectly fine to make decisions. Anyone who needs other details can run their own. This environment you set up, is it in AE? Can you share the number for it? In case others need to do more tests.

 

I am wondering if these results would be similar with the other "blasty" types, Corruptors and Defenders. Are the sets that similar across ATs?

 

 

[Apparition]

32 minutes ago, VV said:

I am wondering if these results would be similar with the other "blasty" types, Corruptors and Defenders. Are the sets that similar across ATs?

 

 

No.  Some powers have different activation times across ATs, some power sets have different powers across ATs, and then there is Scourge.  Some power sets are better with Scourge (Fire and Water Blasts for example), than others.

[Galaxy Brain]

On 8/11/2020 at 1:14 AM, Apparition said:

No.  Some powers have different activation times across ATs, some power sets have different powers across ATs, and then there is Scourge.  Some power sets are better with Scourge (Fire and Water Blasts for example), than others.

I would imagine it would be a *similar* spread, but yes certain sets would definitely change.

Edited August 12, 2020 by Galaxy Brain

[Galaxy Brain]

Just a reminder, the sheet in the Scrapper topic is locked atm for editing purposes / retests.

[Gulbasaur]

On 8/11/2020 at 5:38 AM, VV said:

I am wondering if these results would be similar with the other "blasty" types, Corruptors and Defenders. Are the sets that similar across ATs?

Broadly speaking - it's a decent enough guide but corruptors and (especially) defenders get more powerful secondary effects that occasionally raise the utility of powersets.

 

Scourge plays a factor and so do the higher debuff numbers - defenders do 20% -res with most sonic powers, while blasters do 13%. Sonic is still a harder set to work with, but you'll get the most mileage out of it on a defender. Anything with -res has most value on a defender in a team, for example, because increases damage taken from all sources and defenders get the highest rates.

 

Electric is arguably only viable on a defender if you want to make use of its secondary effect because endurance drain is a bit of an all or nothing thing and only defenders really reliably hit the tipping point. Dark is another with a very powerful debuff that blasters get comparatively low values on as ToHit debuff works very similarly to defence, making it a very powerful set while levelling because if makes you very, very survivable with relatively little investment.

 

Dual Pistols and Beam Rifle both make use of secondary effects that might give them an edge on corruptors or defenders. For example, piercing rounds and piercing beam do -13% resist on blasters but -20% on defenders - on a team that could stack up the extra damage quite quickly. Both are quite proc-friendly as well, meaning you get better returns on investment to close the gap than with blasters.

 

There's also the issue that for blasters, killing everything really quickly is often the best way to stay alive so they need to prioritise damage to a greater extent - a lot of defenders and corruptors get some pretty impressive debuffs quite early so immediate damage is less of a concern allowing them to work with "slow burn" builds more safely.

Edited August 23, 2020 by Gulbasaur

[Galaxy Brain]

14 hours ago, Gulbasaur said:

Electric is arguably only viable on a defender if you want to make use of its secondary effect because endurance drain is a bit of an all or nothing thing and only defenders really reliably hit the tipping point.

Wanna touch on this real quick as its actually the opposite, defenders and blasters have the same end drains.

[Gulbasaur]

8 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Wanna touch on this real quick as its actually the opposite, defenders and blasters have the same end drains.

: O

Thanks for the correction!

 

[Galaxy Brain]

4 hours ago, Gulbasaur said:

: O

Thanks for the correction!

 

Yeah, its honestly kind of weird! It's a toss up though as defs and corrs can get Elec Affin / Ice / Kin to help drain tho

[ThrillMill]

On 8/24/2020 at 8:22 AM, Galaxy Brain said:

Yeah, its honestly kind of weird! It's a toss up though as defs and corrs can get Elec Affin / Ice / Kin to help drain tho

Just my experience from back on Live. I had an Elec/Nrg "Blapper" that attempted to leverage the End Drain from Elec with Power Build Up from Energy Secondary. A fringe case to be sure but it was possible to do back then ((12 years ago...))

[OrionX]

This is great work.

I see a lot of arguing on how and what is used by blasters.  Take this valuable data for what it is and use it to influence your blasters.

I have found it very helpful!

 

Thanks for supporting the blaster community.

[Scientist]

I agree that this data is fine as is, as it helps people choose between options.  If you know your plan from the start is to PL your blaster to 50, IO them out with defensive sets and incarnates, and THEN start playing them, you know you probably want to do Fire, because you have safety covered elsewhere.  A player with that plan probably doesn't need data sets that cover every possible variation, from using a purple insp to pool powers and incarnates.   If you know your plan is to role-play your blaster through content solo, living off what drops along the way, maybe pick a set like Dark that ranks high in safety.  

[Gulbasaur]

Thank you for this! 

 

It'd be interested in seeing a secondaries version, but I realise that's a whole lot of work! 

[laudwic]

With my Psy/TM blaster, rather than up the group size I upped the enemy level for missions.  Even at +1/0 most missions have a purple or two.

 

I would expect that if you ran +1/0 or +2/0 instead of 0/+3 you would see the sets like PSI be higher rated and sets that shine in AoEs taking a hit. 

[srmalloy]

On 8/3/2020 at 1:53 PM, Galaxy Brain said:

The best way I could describe Dual Pistols at a base/isolated level is Anemic. Swapping mainly between Normal and Incendiary ammo depending on whether I needed safety or damage, I was able to clench an incredibly consistent performance, but it was consistently on the slow side.

Without knowing how often you used it, I wonder how much the bug that dropped the base damage from Hail of Bullets (beta patch notes: "Hail of Bullets (Blaster): Fixed an issue where the blaster version of this power would not trigger the base lethal damage in PvE") affected its performance.

[Galaxy Brain]

On 11/9/2020 at 6:46 PM, srmalloy said:

Without knowing how often you used it, I wonder how much the bug that dropped the base damage from Hail of Bullets (beta patch notes: "Hail of Bullets (Blaster): Fixed an issue where the blaster version of this power would not trigger the base lethal damage in PvE") affected its performance.

Now that it's open beta, I can admit I used the fixed version!

[therealtitanman]

cant wait for secondary result 😄

[Galaxy Brain]

So, it occurred to me that the Blast Sets are really more about their AoE potential... and conveniently, AE has a way to make you invulnerable so you can tackle x8 content solo on SO's! Let's take a look at how the sets perform in a fully saturated +0/x8 environment with basic slotting:

 

 

 

So, little surprise here in terms of the tippity top and ...bottomy bottom, but something interesting is just how close a large portion of the sets are in the middle. Note on Dual Pistols is that I used only Incendiary given I was invulnerable, mimicking having an 8-man team handling your aggro / defenses. Fire Blast obviously stood out a lot, but that also got me thinking based on a note by @ScarySai: Fire's Fast Snipe adds a LOT to the set. 

 

 

Without using the snipe, Fire is much more on-par with DP and Rad blast in the A tier which is interesting, and really goes to show how impactful a fast snipe can be!

 

 

S TIER: FIRE BLAST

With this test at x8 and no worries about safety, it should be no surprise that Fire takes the cake, even when you have on snipe tied behind your back. 

 

A TIER: DUAL PISTOLS / RAD BLAST

Likewise, these two sets were able to really let loose with their AoEs where they couldn't before. For Pistols, being able to just stay in Incendiary mode was a huge boon where before I had to swap ammo when in danger or to do soft control or debuff, not much else to say here aside from the Bullet Storm T9 working properly being awesome. Rad Blast with the safety off is a great suprise with how well it performed, though the sluggishness of it's AoEs kept it behind Pistols IMO.

 

B TIER: WATER BLAST

Dropping a good bit from the "standard" test, Water is still great but I feel it was kept back slightly due to animation speed. Granted, it was not the fastest in the OG test either but in this test "good" isn't the best. 

 

C TIER: ARCHERY / BEAM RIFLE / ELEC BLAST / ICE BLAST / ENERGY BLAST / PSY BLAST

Ok, so this is a very big tier, but most of the sets fall into an interesting pattern.

 

Archery/Energy Blast - Despite what I just said, Archery just sort of felt average to me here. It has good ST and good AoE just like Water, but lacked any big-hitters like Water which plopped into this tier. Likewise, Energy is in the same boat where it is just sort of your basic blast set, but with Nova on a longer timer Archery ended up being faster.

 

Beam Rifle / Ice Blast / Psy Blast - These three all share a common design where they all deal ST much more effectively than AoE, at least throughout a mission (Blizzard is amazing but not always there / takes a bit). With so many enemies to chew through, the cones and spreading DoT of Beam took longer, as did the Rains and cone of Ice. Psychci Blast, specifically Psy Nado surprised me with how effective it was despite being the only AoE in the set it was up quite often and had great coverage... that said it's the only AoE outside the nuke.

 

Elec Blast - Kind of the opposite of above, Elec actually did very well with AoE with how Voltaic Sentinel would randomly ping targets in the group for that *last* bit of damage, and Ball Lightning + SC actually did a good bit of work as you toss out ST attacks and they tick away. That said... Voltaic Sentinel also had a lot of trouble focusing on the bosses, and without a proper 3rd blast the set suffered in ST quite a lot despite the "on paper" good ST.

 

D TIER: DARK BLAST

This dropped compared to the first test for two reasons: 1: Safety obv doesnt matter, and 2: AoE contained within a Nuke and 2 differently sized cones is just awkward, esp with one being DoT. Not much else to say beyond that.

 

E TIER: ASSAULT RIFLE

The same issues as said before, but Ignite's fear effect is even more pronounced as is the scatter messing with your cones of different sizes. Also, animation times = sad panda.

 

F TIER: SONIC ATTACK

Take Dark Blast and make the animations bad + remove two ST attacks as Screech is just awful, and Siren's Song really doesn't add much. Upon revisiting the set as well, something that stood out is that Shout (and sound waves in general IMO) really *looks* like it could have been a Cone attack. Much like melee sets with Head Splitter or Eviscerate, having a hard hitting, small-area Cone is something that only a select few blast sets have and could make the power much better immediately.

 

 

 

 

 

[Apparition]

Dual Pistols for life.

[BLVD]

@Galaxy Brain I'm 100% for changing Shout to be a cone attack. The smallest ranged cones I could find were Piercing Beam/Rounds at 5 degrees. It would be awesome to see more of these in other sets.

 

What I find odd is that powers like Cosmic Burst and Blaze have the same range as the t1/t2 blasts. I always thought the icon of those powers signified that they were a shorter distance, harder hitting attack. I think it would be cool to cut the range of those blasts (as well as Shout, Lancer Shot, etc) to ~45ft and give them that small cone effect with the same ratio as Head Splitter. Would make for more interesting blaster combat IMO.

[Galaxy Brain]

21 minutes ago, tan702 said:

@Galaxy Brain I'm 100% for changing Shout to be a cone attack. The smallest ranged cones I could find were Piercing Beam/Rounds at 5 degrees. It would be awesome to see more of these in other sets.

I agree that this could help a couple of sets out for sure. Sonic just stands out immediately as it is the worst by far + thematically it makes sense to have sound waves pass through a whole crowd easily.

 

21 minutes ago, tan702 said:

 

What I find odd is that powers like Cosmic Burst and Blaze have the same range as the t1/t2 blasts. I always thought the icon of those powers signified that they were a shorter distance, harder hitting attack. I think it would be cool to cut the range of those blasts (as well as Shout, Lancer Shot, etc) to ~45ft and give them that small cone effect with the same ratio as Head Splitter. Would make for more interesting blaster combat IMO.

This actually used to be the case! Many T3 blasts had a 40ft range while the T1 and T2 had 80, but many people found that far too annoying. Nerfing it back down would be a bit drastic nowadays.

 

On top of this, these do not need to be cones, especially Blaze.

[Haijinx]

why does Energy blast do so poorly in AOE, the knockback?

 

It has two great fast animating AOEs and then the nuke 

 

 

[Galaxy Brain]

10 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

why does Energy blast do so poorly in AOE, the knockback?

 

It has two great fast animating AOEs and then the nuke 

The KB I think was a factor as if mobs here and there get pushed out of the second wave of attacks, it means more cycles to defeat the encounter.

[Haijinx]

15 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

The KB I think was a factor as if mobs here and there get pushed out of the second wave of attacks, it means more cycles to defeat the encounter.

Thanks, I think Energy Torrent an underrated power.  Nice wide cone and quick animation. 

 

But yeah without KB->KD enhancements Energy Blast scatters baddies around 

[brasilgringo]

I run my DP only in Incendiary ammo, and while I agree the AOE is great (it's a DP/Martial using Hail / Dragon's Tail / Bullet Rain) the sluggishness on the single target big hitters is really noticeable vs. fire.  Even using a procc'd out Supressive Fire.  I like it, but my Fire and even ranged Water blasters feel more responsive (even with your comments about Water's anim times -- double-tap Water Jet is great).  Also Water adds a safety element that's hard to overestimate especially on lower-level TFs / leveling.  But Fire is, well, awesome sauce.

Edited January 19, 2021 by brasilgringo

[Chelsea Rorec]

Thank you for telling everyone that AR is terrible.

Keep it up.

I have a terrible time clearing mobs with Full auto,LRM and trip mine and  i definitely do not have those recharged for everymob.

Snipe rifle is NOT worth the animation time and DOES NOT one shot most mobs.

Flamethrower and Burn DOES NOT kill AV's and EB's with ease.

I DO NOT recommend AR/DEV and you SHOULD NOT play those sets!.

AR really needs a buff Dev's 😉