I'd love to be able to solo on a blaster... is this possible?

[Eva Destruction]

4 hours ago, Novacat said:

Having many times the faceplanting rate and risk was the devs own words on the matter. It was why the i24 changes were so heavy (+50% recovery and 225% regen is no small tweak)

Yes, they had a higher faceplanting risk.  The reason they had many times the faceplanting rate was because people didn't account for that and tried to play them like Scrappers.  Now they've been buffed to the point where you can play them like Scrappers, everybody is doing so and calling Blasters "finally soloable." 

[MunkiLord]

On 8/13/2019 at 3:36 PM, Eva Destruction said:

Yes, they had a higher faceplanting risk.  The reason they had many times the faceplanting rate was because people didn't account for that and tried to play them like Scrappers.  Now they've been buffed to the point where you can play them like Scrappers, everybody is doing so and calling Blasters "finally soloable." 

See, Blasters ARE the new Scrappers!

[Coyote]

3 hours ago, MunkiLord said:

See, Blasters ARE the new Scrappers!

 

Let me be the first to welcome our new Blapper overlords.

[Murcielago]

Fire/Energy was my go to character before Murcielago. His build was max recharge/damage, it was a kill or be killed playstyle. High stakes but high reward. Died a lot but it was fun. 

[MunkiLord]

If you ain't dyin, you ain't tryin

[Sakai]

Trying not to be dying. Dying a bunch. Loving almost every second of it lol

[Eva Destruction]

Debt is such a joke now that if you nuke your way through a map and die once or twice you're still way ahead of the ATs that slowly slap their enemies to death with a wet noodle in complete safety.

[Rathulfr]

On 7/9/2019 at 2:13 AM, Sovera said:

You can solo on a blaster, of course. The trick is, sure, softcap defenses, but you're not going to be doing glorious battle. What you are going to do is launch your nukes from a distance and watch things die.

 

If you start the fight by having thrown your nuke at a pack, backed by Aim and Build-Up, nothing much will have survived and thus nothing much will be shooting back at you.

 

Varvatos approves of glorious battle!

 

[Tahliah]

My main is an ice/ice/ice blaster, and I solo everything in game except GMs.  What I don't quite get is the "+2/x8 content or +4/x8 content" thing.  Sure, my fully tricked out with set IO's and 4-tier incarnates can do that (depending on the baddie), but . . . why would that be a goal?  Blasters are blasters.  We're not tanks or scrappers or brutes or even sents.  In other words, I guess I don't get the logic behind your basic premise.  If you want an incarnate tank-scrapper-blaster, you can build one, maybe even an archery/fire one, but if your goal is to kill "+2/x8 content or +4/x8 content," why even consider a blaster?  Build a hardy farm toon and love it.

 

I love my main, she's about as awesome as she can be, but she's still a blaster.  If I forget that for a moment, she dies.  You're not going to get massive hp or resistance or defense on a blaster . . . unless and until you sacrifice dps.  But why would you do that?  Blasters are "glass cannons," we kill hard and fast because if we don't, we die.  It's the nature of the blaster beast. 

 

But I've seen some super impressive blappers (that can't touch my own dps, but are way more survivable), so it's all in what you want to build and what you are willing sacrifice to build it.

[Murcielago]

[Obitus]

11 hours ago, Tahliah said:

My main is an ice/ice/ice blaster, and I solo everything in game except GMs.  What I don't quite get is the "+2/x8 content or +4/x8 content" thing.  Sure, my fully tricked out with set IO's and 4-tier incarnates can do that (depending on the baddie), but . . . why would that be a goal?  Blasters are blasters.  We're not tanks or scrappers or brutes or even sents.  In other words, I guess I don't get the logic behind your basic premise.  If you want an incarnate tank-scrapper-blaster, you can build one, maybe even an archery/fire one, but if your goal is to kill "+2/x8 content or +4/x8 content," why even consider a blaster?  Build a hardy farm toon and love it.

 

I love my main, she's about as awesome as she can be, but she's still a blaster.  If I forget that for a moment, she dies.  You're not going to get massive hp or resistance or defense on a blaster . . . unless and until you sacrifice dps.  But why would you do that?  Blasters are "glass cannons," we kill hard and fast because if we don't, we die.  It's the nature of the blaster beast. 

 

But I've seen some super impressive blappers (that can't touch my own dps, but are way more survivable), so it's all in what you want to build and what you are willing sacrifice to build it.

Depending on what you mean by "massive hp or resistance or defense," I'm not sure your position is accurate.  Sure, Blasters aren't ideal in farming content, mostly because they get much more scatter than e.g. a Brute with a taunt aura.  That extra scatter can exacerbate the Blaster's durability disadvantages, which are considerable.

 

Still, IO builds generally don't present you with a direct, 1:1 trade off between offense and defense.  The idea that a Blaster built to be a "glass cannon" must have oodles more offense than, say, a build with soft-capped Ranged or S/L DEF, is a persistent myth - similar to the persistent myth on the live forums that Blasters must have far and away the best DPS simply because they should.  (The latter was a common refrain going back to way before we had all of our new shiny toys, even before old toys like Defiance and the increased AT damage scalar.)

 

Once you pass a certain level of global recharge, there isn't a whole hell of a lot you can do to improve offense.  You can chase +damage bonuses, sure, but those are generally tiny unless you really sell out to get them, and even if you do sell out for them you'll be lucky to net more than about a 10% advantage over the next guy, at the high end.  These days, you can also go the proc route, and admittedly this approach can be very potent, but even a (relatively) defensive build can usually afford to slot out one or two attacks with the best unique procs.

 

Compare the net benefit of these approaches to the prospect of avoiding 90% of all incoming attacks from a preferred type or vector.  There's just no contest.  So it's certainly valid to build a glass cannon; if you enjoy that play style more power to you, and I'm sure you're effective with it, but I wouldn't assume that a more defensive build "can't touch your DPS."  If I'm wrong about that, I'd love to see your build.

Edited August 17, 2019 by Obitus

[MunkiLord]

23 hours ago, Tahliah said:

If you want an incarnate tank-scrapper-blaster, you can build one, maybe even an archery/fire one

This is actually what I'm considering making very soon! But I already have two level 50 Archers and a level 50 /Fire, so I'm unsure if I want to repeat the same sets again so soon. But the AoE would be glorious! Plus I could slot a pretty good amount of KD in there(would take Bonfire too) so I could keep enemies from running away from Burn and Hot Feet.

[Flat Line]

There is no doubt you can solo as a blaster. Many of us have done it.

 

I'd even say they are the most fun, BECAUSE they can die easily. It's high risk/reward.

 

I've often found other ATs boring because they are so safe..

 

There are also a lot of choices on how you play a blaster. 

[McGarnackle]

I've got five fully kitted-out blasters. Three of them (fire/fire/fire, rad/mm/fire, and water/rad/fire) are farmers (+4/8) and are plenty of fun and efficient at doing so. My other two are built for more regular PVE stuff. One is a rad/time/fire (with S/L def around 30) and an elec/em/fire (with capped ranged def) long range sniper. Both of those solo easily.

 

You'll note */*/fire mastery is a common theme as Bonfire with a KB to KD proc is awesome and increases survivability dramatically. That being said, it's not needed to build a blaster who can solo.

 

I am working on an alternate build for the rad/mm to take down GMs and I am sure it will be very doable. Anyone who says blasters can't solo does not know how to build. End of story.

[TheAdjustor]

On 8/17/2019 at 9:40 AM, Obitus said:

Still, IO builds generally don't present you with a direct, 1:1 trade off between offense and defense.  The idea that a Blaster built to be a "glass cannon" must have oodles more offense than, say, a build with soft-capped Ranged or S/L DEF, is a persistent myth - similar to the persistent myth on the live forums that Blasters must have far and away the best DPS simply because they should.  (The latter was a common refrain going back to way before we had all of our new shiny toys, even before old toys like Defiance and the increased AT damage scalar.)

 

Once you pass a certain level of global recharge, there isn't a whole hell of a lot you can do to improve offense.  You can chase +damage bonuses, sure, but those are generally tiny unless you really sell out to get them, and even if you do sell out for them you'll be lucky to net more than about a 10% advantage over the next guy, at the high end.  These days, you can also go the proc route, and admittedly this approach can be very potent, but even a (relatively) defensive build can usually afford to slot out one or two attacks with the best unique procs.

 

Compare the net benefit of these approaches to the prospect of avoiding 90% of all incoming attacks from a preferred type or vector.  There's just no contest.  So it's certainly valid to build a glass cannon; if you enjoy that play style more power to you, and I'm sure you're effective with it, but I wouldn't assume that a more defensive build "can't touch your DPS."  If I'm wrong about that, I'd love to see your build.

Don't want to be confrontational on this, But if blasters aren't bringing top tier damage, why invite one to a team ? You need venge bait or it's to dull healing the incarnate tank ?

[Eva Destruction]

 

On 8/16/2019 at 10:03 PM, Tahliah said:

But I've seen some super impressive blappers (that can't touch my own dps, but are way more survivable), so it's all in what you want to build and what you are willing sacrifice to build it.

Maybe on paper, and if the blappers aren't Fire or /Fire.  But in the reality, the Blapper can solo on x8 which means they get a ton of inspiration drops, which they can convert into reds and chug, because they don't need to save space for purples or even a lot of greens.  On a team, they can run off by themselves or maybe with a Scrapper and take full advantage of all their damage instead of wasting it on things that the rest of the team has half-killed already.

 

9 minutes ago, TheAdjustor said:

Don't want to be confrontational on this, But if blasters aren't bringing top tier damage, why invite one to a team ? You need venge bait or it's to dull healing the incarnate tank ?

 

By that logic, why invite anything that isn't an FoTM powerset with a top-end build?

 

[Obitus]

28 minutes ago, TheAdjustor said:

Don't want to be confrontational on this, But if blasters aren't bringing top tier damage, why invite one to a team ? You need venge bait or it's to dull healing the incarnate tank ?

I'm not sure I understand the question, but maybe I wasn't clear enough in the passage you quoted.

 

I was referring to balance arguments going back to the game's birth.  In those balance arguments, there was always a cohort arguing that Blaster offense was far and away the best in the game, with zero evidence.  Their position was tautological - "Blasters should be the damage kings; therefore their damage is unequaled."

 

Of course, for a long long long time, Blaster offense wasn't necessarily the best in the game, certainly not by leaps and bounds.  This isn't a moral judgment; it has nothing to do with whether or not Blasters should have been invited to teams or whether they were technically capable of soloing at a decent clip.  It was simply a game mechanics' question: is Blaster offense high enough to justify the AT's disadvantages?

 

These days, I think the answer to that question is close enough to "yes."  I like the way the AT performs.  Sustains, fast snipes and best of all crashless nukes gave Blasters the eye-popping offense they were always supposed to have (or something close to it), along with a large buff to quality of life.  Certain power sets could still use a pass, of course, particularly for DPA, but on the whole I have no complaints.

 

But it's worth emphasizing that, in terms of the game's development history, Issue 24 was basically yesterday.  My point was that there've always been people arguing, based on nothing more than their erroneous gut feelings, that Blasters have super-awesome-brutally-sick-unparalleled DPS.  It just wasn't so. 

Edited August 18, 2019 by Obitus

[TheAdjustor]

2 minutes ago, Obitus said:

I'm not sure I understand the question, but maybe I wasn't clear enough in the passage you quoted.

Indeed I misunderstood. Thank you for the clarification. It's really amazing how much of that baggage has survived even the death and rebirth of the game.

[TheAdjustor]

6 minutes ago, Eva Destruction said:

By that logic, why invite anything that isn't an FoTM powerset with a top-end build?

 

 

Well that's an interesting argument against extremism in any form.  It's like taking the leap from Jefferson saying "The government that governs the least governs best" to saying we should never have any government at all and any time we do it's a crime.

 

Blasters have always been in a bad place in this game, because the devs were always committed to having them be the least survivable class but never were willing to balance their damage against that vulnerabilty.

 

But anyway to rephrase your question, why bring an AT that is bringing the second least of everything to the team ?  or as I asked in my original "The Emp getting bored ? "

[Eva Destruction]

5 minutes ago, TheAdjustor said:

But anyway to rephrase your question, why bring an AT that is bringing the second least of everything to the team ?  or as I asked in my original "The Emp getting bored ? "

Because they're not bringing the second-least of everything.  Blaster damage still on par with, if not greater than, all other ATs for general PvE, barring maybe a few FOTM Scrapper and Brute builds.  You bring a Blaster to kill everything, you always did, the i24 changes just mean that the emp might still be bored.

[Tachstar]

Here's my Electric Blast/Martial Combat/Electrical Mastery blaster -- my first new 50, woot -- soloing.  Cool costume, huh?  Best I can recall, he's only teamed once, and that was for that crazy TF in the Hollows.

 

 

 

[Herotu]

Ekz will tell you it's absolutely possible!

[Myrmidon]

Yes.

[Myrmidon]

On 8/18/2019 at 3:38 AM, MunkiLord said:

This is actually what I'm considering making very soon! But I already have two level 50 Archers and a level 50 /Fire, so I'm unsure if I want to repeat the same sets again so soon. But the AoE would be glorious! Plus I could slot a pretty good amount of KD in there(would take Bonfire too) so I could keep enemies from running away from Burn and Hot Feet.

We have 1,000 character slots. If this game lasts for at least as long as the old reality, there’s always room to give it a go.

[MunkiLord]

I'm definitely going to do it, I'm just debating if I want to yet. I have yet to make a Beam Rifle or Water Blaster, and those are on my list too. If only someone could pay me to play and test builds full time, life would be complete.