Blasts are too weak

[Diantane]

When I made a defender I have to train the first attack, but after using it in DFB for a half down levels, Its's removed from the toolbar and I concentrate on my primaries.

 

I have a 50 pain/rad defender. Its best blast with 3-SO damage enhancements does 3 x 30 (big deal! ). The only defender I have that does any real damage is a kin/beam 50. All the other ones are very weak damage. A defender's blast are a secondary power and they don't crit.

 

I tried dual pistols on a Sentinel and it took me almost two minutes to kill anything during Frostfire. I can't imagine training DP on a defender - lol.

[ZorkNemesis]

Defenders have low damage.  That's normal as they're meant to fill a supporting role.  The tradeoff is that their buff/debuff values are higher than anyone else.  Sure that Sonic Blast attack isn't going to shatter any eardrums but the -RES component of the attack will be more effective out of a Defender then it would a Blaster or even Corrupter.  You should still be blasting even if you aren't doing much damage because, unless you're throwing Fire, those secondary effects will still apply and weaken whatever you're shooting.  If you're looking for high damage output, Defender generally isn't the choice.

 

Typically to get the most damage from Defender attacks you have to load up on damage procs where possible.  Since the procs ignore AT modifiers you're able to get a lot of mileage out of them.  You do run the risk of starving yourself of set bonuses and decent enhancement numbers however but it can be worked around.

 

Also, Poison/Pistol Defender checking in; Pistols is fantastic for proc builds; you can put Slow set procs into every power even if you don't use Cryo Ammo.  Suppressive Fire can also be loaded up for a surprising amount of fast damage.  I can do respectable damage and have a strong debuff game for sure and i'm typically running Chem Rounds to further reduce mob damage output.  It's pretty good.

[Renatos1023]

I primarily play defenders. If you are looking to play an AT that deals massive, ranged damage.... you're in the wrong place (find Blasters and Sentinels). Defenders are support ATs. Your buffs/debuffs come first, and damage is secondary (as the sets are laid out). This isn't to say that certain Defender sets can't put out a lot of damage...they can. You just have to choose and slot carefully. My Cold/ and Dark/ Defenders are always first in the mobs because of their debuffs and nukes. They can mitigate/soak up Alphas, and deal a lot of damage...but that also costs a lot of influence. 

 

The set that you mention, Pain/, I have no experience with. I read its stats as a slightly more offensive Empath...a set I would never try to break alpha or be a damage dealer with. I think your Defender damage and usefulness comes down to your primary...Pain is more of a buff set, from looking at it (as I said, I haven't played it). And if you can't mitigate an Alpha strike as a Defender then that is TOTALLY fine, that is not your job. But a lot of Defender damage comes from the debuffs that your primary puts out. 

 

My Cold/Ice Defender generally breaks alpha strikes and can run point on most normal +4 ITFs (not the +star ones, screw those, they aren't fun). My Dark/Dark is just getting into incarnate levels but is a debuff beast. Being able to nuke every mob and shut down every group's to-hit is a boon. 

 

Defenders don't lack damage, you just have to figure out how to build them and there are many of us here who are more than happy to help.

[MonteCarla]

At level 50, Cosmic Burst does 76 damage unslotted, so 150 damage slotted. You're doing it wrong. 🙂

 

And your nuke does about twice that to multiple targets.

And lead with Anguishing Cry slotted with a Achilles Heel -Res proc, and you can multiply those by an extra 40% or so.

 

I've got like 18 Defenders to 50, of all different powersets. Even my Empathy/Archer can solo if I need to.

[Doomguide2005]

     Indeed if your best blast is only 3 tics of 30 damage you clearly are not building, even on SOs, for damage in your blasts.  Not everyone wants a highly offensive Empath (or Pain), but as @MonteCarla points out Cosmic Burst unenhanced for damage does 77 (rounded).  Fully enhanced on SOs should be about twice that.  Everything after that is more damage (Assault and several Pain powers can self boost it further).  My Emp/Rad is around is around 300 with PBU and recharges in about 2.5 seconds.  But she is built for higher defenses and offense while remaining perfectly capable of keeping a team buffed and green using IOs (any lack of damage output or buffs to the team is pilot error not the fault of any power) but has very little outside of PBU to self boost the damage further discounting Inspires.  And that does not count the mez and debuffs accompanying her blasts.  Point being if you don't slot for damage regardless of SOs vs IOs vs sets vs Incarnate Abilities it's not really the blasts themselves not doing enough damage.  You won't be doing blaster level damage but those values should be notably better than 3 * 30 damage,

 

Edit:  And she will leap into endgame mobs with little hesitation commonly letting loose with Irradiate followed by Atomic Blast if for some reason there's much standing at that point after the team also lets loose (yes that means she's often breaking the alpha return) she'll start in with Cosmic Burst and Air Superiority on a boss who's rapidly stunned and doing flips while I mix in the buffs to teammates while continuing to blast. She tends to do this more with her Dark Mastery build rather than PBU but Oppressive Gloom plus Stun Grenades and Cosmic Burst tend to leave entire mobs out of commission.

Edited March 13 by Doomguide2005

[MoonSheep]

i only pick defender blast powersets for their secondary effect rather than damage, e.g elec for minus endurance, sonic for -res. life is a lot more enjoyable this way

 

accepting your fate as a low to no damage dealer allows you to focus on those secondary effects, making your defender even more powerful on teams

 

the exception to this is a procced out poison/fire def with dominate from the psi mastery decked out with 5 damage procs - now that’s a damage dealer

[Doomguide2005]

2 minutes ago, MoonSheep said:

i only pick defender blast powersets for their secondary effect rather than damage, e.g elec for minus endurance, sonic for -res. life is a lot more enjoyable this way

 

accepting your fate as a low to no damage dealer allows you to focus on those secondary effects, making your defender even more powerful on teams

 

the exception to this is a procced out poison/fire def with dominate from the psi mastery decked out with 5 damage procs - now that’s a damage dealer

indeed!, hence why I lead with Irradiate, nice debuff that tics to interrupt annoying mob powers while synergizing with her Tactics and Fortitude to help ensure everyone is hitting their targets including me when Atomic Blast goes off dropping a potent defdebuff and mag 3 Hold in addition to damage.  Point is select your priority whether its debuffing like mad or damage.  But either way if you don't chose to push damage well you aren't going to get it even at defender levels.  Which is good enough to chew up mobs on a Emp/Fire running point on 800 series missions even if not Blaster level.

[MonteCarla]

Doomguide! Moonsheep! 🙂

 

Interesting. There's a few cases where I'd slot an attack for secondaries rather than damage.

 

-Short Circuit. It does hefty -End (35% , 70% slotted). In practice I've usually ended up with +80% damage or so anyway thanks to Frankenslotting.

(Other Electric Blast powers like Ball lightning do like 7%, slotting them to 14% isn't really worth it compared to doubling their damage.)

 

- Dark Blast for -To Hit. I've not actually done this one but I can see it making a reasonable difference.

 

There's plenty of sets where you can't slot for secondary effects like Sonic and Fire.

I'll always slot my attacks for damage, and to get global recharge and other goodies that make me a better supporter.

 

Radiation's an odd one. You'd really slot Defence Debuff over Damage in Irradiate?

My take on this - most of the time my team are hitting 95% of the time anyway, especially with unslotted -37.5% defence debuff. In those rare cases that they don't (eg Paragon Protectors who pop their god mode, big Spawns of Nemesis with 4 stacks of Vengeance) we have yellows, Aim and Build Up, Call to Justice and other tricks for temporary boosts, or better tactics like holding the PP's before they pop.

So, most of the time, the extra Def debuff is wasted, whereas the extra damage never is.

A quote I remember from the old Blaster forums seems to apply here: "Death is the ultimate debuff" 🙂

 

Is this a hard mode thing again? I know enemies get a big defence buff in 4-star mode.

[Hjarki]

To put this in perspective, Blasters have a 1.125 scale while Defenders have a 0.65 scale. So even before we get into the details of Blasters having a second offensive set and Defiance, Defenders are dealing a bit over half the damage of Blasters with the same attacks.

 

This creates a situation where Defenders really need to be built different than other AT to deal remotely decent damage.

 

For example, I'm currently leveling an X/Assault Rifle Defender. This is how my slotting will look at 50:

• Slug: Apocalypse D, D/E, proc; Force Feedback proc; Explosive Strike proc; Gladiator's Javelin proc
• M30 Grenade: Superior Vigilant Assault 3-piece; Overwhelming Force unique, Force Feedback proc, Positron's Blast proc
• Beanbag: Superior Defender's Bastion 6-piece
• Sniper Rifle: Sting of the Manticore 5-piece including proc; Force Feedback proc
• Ignite: Superior Vigilant Assault 3-piece; Positron's Blast proc, Bombardment proc, Annihilation proc
• Full Auto: Artillery 6-piece

Let's consider that first attack (Slug). It normally deals 59.2804 damage in 1.584 sec. With an 8 sec recharge, it has 15.667% * X chance to proc effects. Force Feedback is a 2 PPM proc, Explosive Strike and Gladiator's Javelin 3.5 PPM procs and Apocalypse is a 4.5.

 

So when I fire the attack, I have 31.3% chance to gain +100% recharge for 5 sec. I deal 59.2804 * Damage modifier + 71.75 * 54.83% * 2 + 107.1 * 70.5%. If my total damage modifier for attacks is +125% (including internal damage enhancement), this would yield 287.57 damage or 181.55 dpa.

 

A Blaster who just dumped +damage IOs into the attack would deal 230.85 damage or 145.74 dpa with the same assumptions. In practice, most non-support AT use procs opportunistically. A Blaster is almost certainly going to have the Apocalypse proc somewhere, but it will be part of a 5-set bonus rather than being stranded mostly on its own for pure damage purposes.

 

There are ways around a Defender's overall weak damage, but they are considerably more involved than for other AT.

 

[Doomguide2005]

I haven't really delved into procs (as in proc centered builds) much but Rad blast is certainly well set for it and keep telling myself I need to explore it with 1 of 3 builds.

 

On my Emp/Elec while I'm slotting for damage first I'm usually also pushing the -endmod and -recovery particularly with the AoEs after all the faster the shocked condition comes up the better.  Easier these days with the newer endmod sets.  But I'm also paying even more attention to the -recovery than the -endmod.  The drain seems to occur but keeping them flatlined is really where I'm looking to be.

[PeregrineFalcon]

If you want a character whose blasts do a lot of damage then maybe you should... and I know this might sound strange, but bear with me here... make a Blaster.

 

 

As a Defender, just as with any character, your primary job is to use your primary powerset. A Defender's primary powerset isn't blasts. Complaining that your Defender doesn't do as much damage as your Blaster is like complaining that your truck doesn't go as fast as your racecar.

[Hjarki]

1 hour ago, Doomguide2005 said:

I haven't really delved into procs (as in proc centered builds) much but Rad blast is certainly well set for it and keep telling myself I need to explore it with 1 of 3 builds.

 

On my Emp/Elec while I'm slotting for damage first I'm usually also pushing the -endmod and -recovery particularly with the AoEs after all the faster the shocked condition comes up the better.  Easier these days with the newer endmod sets.  But I'm also paying even more attention to the -recovery than the -endmod.  The drain seems to occur but keeping them flatlined is really where I'm looking to be.

While Radiation Blast might seem like a 'proc friendly' set, it actually isn't. You don't just need the right debuff category for proc availability. You need fast-activating, long recharge powers that can be assembled into an attack chain with minimal internal recharge slotting. You also need enough powers in primary/secondary to build for the recharge, accuracy and endurance management you aren't putting in your attack powers.

 

Radiation's T1 attack has far too low of a recharge to be effective with procs. Its T2 attack has too long of an activation time for its recharge. They're pretty much the worst T1/T2 powers in any blast set. Irradiate is actually a better 'single target' attack than either based solely on dpa - but this doesn't help with procs (where Irradiate's horrible AF cripples procs used on a single target).

 

Radiation Sniper attack is par for the course. However, you normally don't need any sort of special debuff category for sniper attacks because they can slot 3 procs out-of-the-gate (Sting of the Manticore, Apocalypse, Gladiator's Javelin) and it's fairly common to just 5-slot Sting of the Manticore anyway.

 

Cosmic Burst is another horrible-for-procs power due to its activation time.

 

And that's it for Radiation Blast's single target. You've got two truly awful powers, one merely mediocre one and one no-better-than-anyone-else power.

 

Note: You don't really need any sort of special debuff power for AE attacks since they can slot Positron's, Bombardment and Javelin Volley. What you really want from an AE power is a trivial amount of knockback so you can slot Force Feedback. Too much knockback, you lose a slot to Overwhelming Force. No knockback at all, you're losing about 25% of your potential dps due to worse cyclic rate.

 

In terms of Electric Blast, the Shocked condition is a bit of a trap. It's about 16% more damage on your attacks. For Blaster, this is pretty meaningful. If a Blaster fires off Charged Bolts with 225% enhanced damage, Shocked is an additional 28.2 damage while a 3.5 ppm proc would only be 20.9 damage.

 

On a Defender under the same conditions, Shocked is worth 16.3 more damage while that 3.5 ppm proc is still worth 20.9 more damage. Moreover, 'proc builds' are going to slot up 4 of those procs while the only proc Electrical can slot universally is Gladiator's Javelin.

 

So Electric Blast tends to be worthwhile (on Defender) in one of two situations:

• You expect to be running at/near the damage cap. Our fully Fulcrum Shift'd Kineticist will raise Shocked to 28.9 damage per activation on a Defender - a bit better than a free proc. Note that the Corruptor version will add 41.7 damage (due to higher cap and higher base damage) - and that damage will increase to 54.2 if we account for the average performance of Scourge.
• You're mainly concerned about the endurance cost. Charged Bolts with 30% endurance reduction and Dark Blast with 30% endurance reduction both cost 4 endurance. Charged Bolts with Shocked effectively costs 0.75 endurance under the same conditions. This makes Electrical a strong choice for a set like Storm Summoning where you want your blast set to contribute some damage at minimal cost while your support set does the heavy lifting.

If you're not meeting either of those conditions, you're probably doing a lot less damage than a proc-heavy set would.

[Yomo Kimyata]

Counterpoint:  the controls and debuffs on my blaster are too weak.

[PeregrineFalcon]

19 minutes ago, Hjarki said:

If you're not meeting either of those conditions, you're probably doing a lot less damage than a proc-heavy set would.

Gawd I hate procs.

 

I am so sick of the fact that absolutely no conversation can be had about damage without someone chiming in "HeRe's wHY yoU NeEd tO PrOC ouT yoUR ENtiRe bUIld." I'm really going to enjoy it when the Homecoming devs finally nerf the carp outta procs so that damage discussions can focus on damage and not "Proc proc proc proc, PROOC!!"

 

Not trying to pick on you Hjarki. It's not you, it's the game mechanics.

[Haijinx]

Defenders are simply Masterminds with RHI pets. 

 

 

[Luminara]

Guys, he does this regularly, complaining about how bad defender damage is, or that people are "incorrectly" slotting their defender attacks with Damage enhancements instead of control/debuff enhancements, or how few players seem to realize that they're playing defenders wrong by using attacks at all...

 

Just smile, nod and let the thread filter down to the bottom like the others.

[Doomguide2005]

45 minutes ago, Luminara said:

Guys, he does this regularly, complaining about how bad defender damage is, or that people are "incorrectly" slotting their defender attacks with Damage enhancements instead of control/debuff enhancements, or how few players seem to realize that they're playing defenders wrong by using attacks at all...

 

Just smile, nod and let the thread filter down to the bottom like the others.

It's been awhile.  You can accuse me of wondering if the stripes still match but hoping maybe .... *sigh*

[Frozen Burn]

Yes, Op does this with EVERYTHING.  They complain everything sucks and is useless.  People try to help, but then most of the time, they admit they've never even played the thing they are bashing.  (I'm actually surprised they seem to have been playing a defender!)  But sometimes, like now, they never answer respond to their own thread and to any of the help at all.  

 

As @Luminara said, with this person, best to just smile, nod, and let them fade into the archives.  

 

 

Edited March 14 by Frozen Burn

[Luminara]

16 minutes ago, Doomguide2005 said:

It's been awhile.  You can accuse me of wondering if the stripes still match but hoping maybe .... *sigh*

 

Nothing wrong with being an optimist.  Keep it up.  👍

[Psyonico]

I'm still waiting on my always asked question on "should scrappers/brutes ignore their armor because it's their secondary and therefore not good enough"

[Haijinx]

38 minutes ago, Psyonico said:

I'm still waiting on my always asked question on "should scrappers/brutes ignore their armor because it's their secondary and therefore not good enough"

Defender primaries are much more powerful than Scrapper and Brute primaries.

[MonteCarla]

10 hours ago, Psyonico said:

I'm still waiting on my always asked question on "should scrappers/brutes ignore their armor because it's their secondary and therefore not good enough"

 

OMG, this, so much!

 

No other archetype has people saying you should neglect your secondary the way Defenders do. 

I've hardly ever made a Scrapper, Brute, Stalker or Sentinel without the Fighting pool, let lone slotting my secondary armors.

If a Controller, Corruptor or Mastermind rocked up and said they hadn't taken their Force Field buffs, or even hadn't slotted them, they'd get a certain amount of side-eye.

A Blaster with no melee attacks from their secondary is a bit of a concept build, to say the least 

 

Thanks, Psyonico, for articulating this so clearly. 

[MoonSheep]

On 3/13/2024 at 9:31 PM, MonteCarla said:

Radiation's an odd one. You'd really slot Defence Debuff over Damage in Irradiate?

My take on this - most of the time my team are hitting 95% of the time anyway, especially with unslotted -37.5% defence debuff. In those rare cases that they don't (eg Paragon Protectors who pop their god mode, big Spawns of Nemesis with 4 stacks of Vengeance) we have yellows, Aim and Build Up, Call to Justice and other tricks for temporary boosts, or better tactics like holding the PP's before they pop.

So, most of the time, the extra Def debuff is wasted, whereas the extra damage never is.

 

irradiate has a long base recharge time (20s) making it a prime candidate for proc, can put two -res procs in it and then others as required

 

i agree that the base -def is strong enough 

[MoonSheep]

14 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Gawd I hate procs.

 

I am so sick of the fact that absolutely no conversation can be had about damage without someone chiming in "HeRe's wHY yoU NeEd tO PrOC ouT yoUR ENtiRe bUIld." I'm really going to enjoy it when the Homecoming devs finally nerf the carp outta procs so that damage discussions can focus on damage and not "Proc proc proc proc, PROOC!!"

 

Not trying to pick on you Hjarki. It's not you, it's the game mechanics.

 

i think procs are really good fun, it feels like you’re getting a free bonus everytime they go off

 

even if if’s pointless i sometimes put procs in some powers just to get that feel good feeling of getting something for free

 

but yes, there’s a limit to their usefulness. over proccing and building every. single. alt. to “S/L cap, S/L cap, S/L cap” is a bit overdone thesedays and can sometimes make the overall character worse rather than better - e.g sacrificing its ability to contribute to a team for the sake of being able to standalone

[ZorkNemesis]

48 minutes ago, MoonSheep said:

 

irradiate has a long base recharge time (20s) making it a prime candidate for proc, can put two -res procs in it and then others as required

 

i agree that the base -def is strong enough 

 

On my Rad characters, I often double up Fury and Achille's and throw the Overwhelming Force in there too.  It's a real nice way to completely strip resistances away (it boosts the damage of Irradiate a fair bit too since it's a DoT) and the knockdown is useful for reducing incoming damage too.

 

That said, I don't have a Rad defender, just Rad Blasters and Sentinels.  It's great on my Sentinel though since I can destroy entire spawns with Irradiate > Engulfing Darkness > Atomic Blast.