Blaster vs Corruptor damage output

[PuckMulligan]

Since returning, I've been running a dark/plant blaster as my main but im finding there's a lot of overlap in power utilities so I thought I might reroll as a dark/plant corruptor since /plant in that archetype seems more useful. HHowever

, I'm a bit discouraged by the difference in ranged damage levels noted on the character creation screen. Does this accurately translate into damage in the game? Is my rerolled toon going end up feeling like a weaker shadow of her former self?

[natewest1987]

Well.  I don’t know the exact numbers, but, base damage on a blaster is higher.  I think by 50%?  So any increase to that damage is going to be higher from the start. 

 

However, there’s obviously scourge and corruptors have access to other tools that increase damage.   Depending on what content you play, you could find yourself spending a lot of time with mobs below 50% Hp.   I find that my corruptors often outshine their blaster variants in farm maps for instance. 

 

A fire based corruptor can do a shit ton of damage.    I think it depends a lot on powersets.   For dark, you may find the blaster to be better.  /plant I can’t speak for 

[Uun]

Yes, Blasters do 50% more base damage (https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Damage#Damage_Scale), although Corruptors can boost their damage with buffs/debuffs.

 

Also, /plant isn't a Corruptor secondary - they get /nature, which has only one overlapping power. Most of the blaster /plant powers come from the controller plant primary or the spines primary.

[Without_Pause]

A blaster also is only doing more damage for themselves with little mitigation. A corruptor is more about doing team based damage and can have some better tools for mitigation. If all you care about is raw damage, then blasters are better for that.

[ratinox]

Indeed. While corruptors can get close to blaster damage in their primaries once scourge and debuffs are applied, they're going to lose in the long run once secondaries are factored in. Blasters have more ways to do more damage than corruptors. That's not to say corruptors can't be competitive because they definitely can, but getting the most out of a corruptor doesn't come from stacking moar damage. It's providing support for the group whether that's just yourself, a team of 8 running missions or task forces, or a league running Underground or BAF.

[PuckMulligan]

2 hours ago, Without_Pause said:

A blaster also is only doing more damage for themselves with little mitigation. A corruptor is more about doing team based damage and can have some better tools for mitigation. If all you care about is raw damage, then blasters are better for that.

if that's the case, corruptor might be better anyway since I'm more inclined to play in groups!

[modest]

I'm going to address the powersets that you specified rather than make a general comparison of blaster and corruptor damage.

 

The quick version is that a dark blast/plant manipulation blaster will do more damage than a dark blast/nature affinity corruptor. The difference in damage will likely be more than 50% once you reach T4 incarnates and/or have +3 level shifts.

 

I play with a friend who runs a very high end /nature affinity corruptor. I enjoy playing with him because he adds a lot to the team, but damage is not his primary contribution. Overgrowth gives the team a permanent damage and tohit boost, and a huge endurance discount for all of our skills. The endurance discount is the greater asset because on a full team we can hit the damage cap without his buffs. Wild Bastion gives the entire team an absorb shield that is quite significant. With his slotting, the absorb shield is for over 50% of our health. Lifegiving spores restores our endurance and stacks with overgrowth. Wild growth helps keeps our resistances capped. We can safely tackle any 50+4 +4/8 content with his /nature affinity corruptor on the team.

 

In comparison, it's my perception that my defender does about the same amount of damage as his corruptor. My blaster does significantly more damage than his /nature affinity corruptor. However, my blaster does not contribute to the team in any way other than damage. There are strike forces such as the B.A.F. where this damage is helpful and almost necessary to achieve a perfect run. However, in most content the nature affinity corruptor contributes more to the team.

 

Edited August 31, 2019 by modest

[tjknight]

Modest pretty much nailed it. Also, powerset selection makes a huge difference. 

 

You can build a damage focused corruptor by combining a heavier damage primary (ex: fire) with a debuff focused secondary (ex: radiation). 

 

The combo you're thinking about (dark/nature) would be more support focused. Dark does decent damage and floors enemies to hit. While nature is mix of strong team buffs and enemy debuff. 

 

The Fire/Rad would most likely out damage the Dark/Nature. But the Dark/Nature would offer strong team support while doing acceptable DPS. 

 

It all depends on how you play and what powers you pick. 

[biostem]

The first power in /nature affinity applies something like a 20% damage resistance debuff, so don't discount that.  I also seem to recall corruptors getting a great damage resist debuff out of sonic attack than blasters.  Of course, blasters do get stacking damage buffs from all their attacks, however.  As Without_Pause mentioned, the deciding factor would be whether you want to contribute more to a team or max your own damage...

[Darkir]

 If we are talking self power buffs only without inspirations, then many corruptors can outdamage blaster. Longs farm for instance, where a blaster could never stock enough reds to keep themselves at a comparable damage point. The corruptors pays for each of these buffs in cast time though, so my fire/kin on a long farm will outperform a blaster, but not by too much because I'm spending time casting fulcrum shift and siphon speed (both once every 20 seconds or so). The real benefit of a corruptors though is as a force multiplier, it's not as efficient for me to farm alone when I could team with a brute with both of us at the damage cap (775% for the brute and 500% for me).

 

As others have mentioned, we do not get a plant secondary powerset, nature is similar in theme only (minus one shared power).

 

If you want to be self-sufficient, most powersets can be io'd out to do that. I would recommend staying away from things like /Sonic though, as their greatest buffs require an ally. 

 

For myself, I love corruptors over blasters because you can do good damage while offering many benefits to the team and some of those benefits are huge ( /time can power boost+Clarion radial+farsight to give more than 30% def to the whole team for example). Corruptors are my favorite AT because I like the hybrid dps/support role in this game a lot, plus you can join blaster/corruptor teams and just shred everything. 😉

[Hjarki]

1 hour ago, Darkir said:

 If we are talking self power buffs only without inspirations, then many corruptors can outdamage blaster. Longs farm for instance, where a blaster could never stock enough reds to keep themselves at a comparable damage point. The corruptors pays for each of these buffs in cast time though, so my fire/kin on a long farm will outperform a blaster, but not by too much because I'm spending time casting fulcrum shift and siphon speed (both once every 20 seconds or so). The real benefit of a corruptors though is as a force multiplier, it's not as efficient for me to farm alone when I could team with a brute with both of us at the damage cap (775% for the brute and 500% for me).

 

As others have mentioned, we do not get a plant secondary powerset, nature is similar in theme only (minus one shared power).

 

If you want to be self-sufficient, most powersets can be io'd out to do that. I would recommend staying away from things like /Sonic though, as their greatest buffs require an ally. 

 

For myself, I love corruptors over blasters because you can do good damage while offering many benefits to the team and some of those benefits are huge ( /time can power boost+Clarion radial+farsight to give more than 30% def to the whole team for example). Corruptors are my favorite AT because I like the hybrid dps/support role in this game a lot, plus you can join blaster/corruptor teams and just shred everything. 😉

This isn't quite true.

 

Blast sets are primarily about burst AE damage - the damage cycle does virtually everything in the first few seconds and drops extremely fast after that. In practice, this means your Fulcrum Shift'd Corruptor can't hope to match Aim/Build Up/Gaussian's on the Blaster for such purposes (especially since Scourge is useless on opening attacks). Moreover, the need to Fulcrum Shift before the damage is dealt is a huge limitation as it disrupts the spawn and exposes the user to an alpha strike.

 

The other major type of fighting - single target damage - doesn't really benefit all that much from Fulcrum Shift due to the lack of targets. It's still useful, but not enough to overcome the Blaster's inherent advantages.

 

In terms of the value of support, you are correct - the Corruptor would be better than the Blaster for that purpose (except for certain very carefully crafted Blasters that are designed for farms). However, what would be better than both would be another Brute. A farming Brute runs around +325% damage, meaning that Fulcrum Shift can only increase their damage by 82% even shoving them to cap (and it does nothing for aspects like procs, so it's even less of a multiplier than that). In contrast, another identical Brute would exactly double the damage. That identical Brute would also have a much better chance of not dying in an intensive farm.

 

The other side is the comparison with Defenders. It's a bit odd to say, but if you want to play a Corruptor you should play a Defender instead and vice versa. The basic principle here is that if your support set is really good at amplifying damage, you're generally better favoring it over your blast set (and vice versa). When you look at the highest damage combinations of Blast Set + Support Set, they're almost invariably Defender builds rather than Corruptor builds. However, if you're interested in playing a more purely 'support' role, this tends to work better as a Corruptor because your damage will be solely dependent on your Blast set.

 

And, of course, the argument could be made that when you talk about the really pure 'support sets', those work better as Controlers/Masterminds (who bring their own party to support with them).

 

 

 

[Without_Pause]

1 hour ago, Hjarki said:

The basic principle here is that if your support set is really good at amplifying damage, you're generally better favoring it over your blast set (and vice versa). When you look at the highest damage combinations of Blast Set + Support Set, they're almost invariably Defender builds rather than Corruptor builds. However, if you're interested in playing a more purely 'support' role, this tends to work better as a Corruptor because your damage will be solely dependent on your Blast set.

 

 

Oddly enough I don't think Kin favors defenders. I think it is weakest there. Something like Storm is another matter.

 

There are reasons for playing a blaster over a corr. One, I play less attention to my teammates if I'm playing my blaster. 😀 

[Sancerre]

just to note, although it is not really surprising and revolutionary... invariably, the fire primary is above and beyond any other primary for damage purposes (both ST and AE).  if we are to talk about dealing damage, there is no discussion to be had around other primaries.

 

in a solo scenario, certain corrupters secondaries will provide greater damage output and defensive options than blasters.  /kinetics (especially) will outperform a blaster everytime (unless the blaster is chewing red inspirs nonstop).  Typically the greater benefit at hand is that there are a number of defensive options so that corrupters can actually walk around in a pack of critters without dying -- a dead blaster does 0 damage -- /time is a great example here providing an insane defense buff as well as a large -to hit debuff... among other things.

 

in a group scenario, corrupters are obviously going to be providing a greater benefit to the overall team (90% of the time) because the buffs and debuffs are a share of their power collectively.  that said, SOMEONE needs to deal the damages -- so the blaster who has nothing else to do BUT damage will individually reap the benefits of the party buffs/debuffs and deal far more damage.  This is not only because blasters inherently deal higher damage (roughly 50%), but also the availability of build-up, additional higher damage melee attacks and the more obvious fact that they will not be spending time casting the buffs/debuffs.

 

so what it boils down to is solo-ability (corrupters are typically "tankier") and group support VS being the highest possible ranged damage.

 

as for the defender vs corrupter topic that was brought up... defender obviously has better group support and general tankiness (the support archetype is now the primary!).  All non offensive powers generally have higher base numbers on defender (includes tough, weave, combat jumping, leadership buffs, etc.) and it adds up.  the damage output will be "similar" solo, as vigilance passive will offset the lower damage defender has in the blasting trees, but the scourge procs will keep corrupter ahead.  The scourge procs are a bit undervalued as well i think... typically you are dumping AoE and killing off minions/LTs which now leaves bosses in scourge range.  That aside, the main difference for damage purposes is that defender is capped at +400% damage, but corrupter is capped at +500% damage.  This is also a big reason kinetics actually favors corrupter (for the corrupter individually) -- fulcrum shift, soul drain, vigilance passive, and enhancements easily puts you above 400% without even using reds or aim/gaussian proc.

 

so here it is mostly a case of defender being the "safe" pick solo and better group support VS general damage output.  and some would argue, why not just do a blaster if you are going to cheapen your group support anyways?  and that is a fair question, but ultimately up to whoever is making the toon... much the same as brutes vs scrappers.

[Hjarki]

6 hours ago, Without_Pause said:

Oddly enough I don't think Kin favors defenders. I think it is weakest there. Something like Storm is another matter.

 

There are reasons for playing a blaster over a corr. One, I play less attention to my teammates if I'm playing my blaster. 😀 

I suppose it depends on what you're trying to optimize. If you absolutely want to play Kinetics and are looking for the best pairing... I'd probably choose a Controller/Mastermind. While Corruptors have a higher +damage cap, Fulcrum Shift only really pays off when you're spreading its benefits across multiple targets rather than just yourself. If you're just buffing your own damage, there are a host of ways to do it more safely and easily.

 

Even in terms of Corruptor vs. Defender only, it's not entirely certain the Corruptor is better. The higher +damage cap is useful, but reaching reasonable defensive totals on the Corruptor is sufficiently difficult that you might throw away this advantage entirely by the need to slot excessively for defense.

 

When I first started playing again, I had all the same preconceptions everyone else did from Live. However, I slowly learned that the old rules had changed - previously excellent sets were now merely adequate while previously overlooked sets were fantastic. Kinetics is one of those "now merely adequate" sets.

23 minutes ago, Sancerre said:

just to note, although it is not really surprising and revolutionary... invariably, the fire primary is above and beyond any other primary for damage purposes (both ST and AE).  if we are to talk about dealing damage, there is no discussion to be had around other primaries.

Even before you address the changes from Live, Beam Rifle is an example of a better single target set. Once you start in on the PPM changes, Fire loses an enormous amount of ground in favor of sets that can slot multiple procs (at least for Corruptors). For Corruptors/Defenders, the newer sets - Water, Beam and Dual Pistols - tend to be the standouts due to the low cooldown ultimates and plethora of slotting options.

44 minutes ago, Sancerre said:

The scourge procs are a bit undervalued as well i think... typically you are dumping AoE and killing off minions/LTs which now leaves bosses in scourge range. 

The standard model for Scourge is +30% damage. In practice, this dramatically overvalues Scourge. Bear in mind that most of your damage came from the process of killing off all the minions/lieutenants and damaging the bosses - which didn't benefit from Scourge. So you're probably only talking about 25% of your damage that can Scourge. Further subtract all that damage that can't Scourge (most damage outside of your primary, procs, etc.). You're left with a small portion of damage, against targets which just don't have enough hit points to usefully Scourge in many cases. Remember, for Scourge to be useful, the target not only has to be below half health but have health above the size of your nuke. The majority of Scourge procs you see against standard enemies (not AV/GM) will simply be overkill - you would have done sufficient damage to kill them even without Scourge.

[Without_Pause]

Based on the flavor of the month threads, level 50s for controllers and corrs are dominated by Kin. Part of that is Empathy and the whole healer aspect for defenders since it is the runaway leader there, but even so, there are more Kins playing as corrs or controllers compared to defenders. A big reason why there are more Kin corrs is due to how much better Fire is as a corr. Fire/kin is the #1 pairing for corrs. Kin/fire is #5 for Kin defenders and #25 overall for defenders. Higher damage cap and Scourge simply wins.

 

 

[PuckMulligan]

this is all very interesting and great information. thanks! i'm going to chew this all over.

[Radiaria]

This isn't as straightforward as you'd think...

 

With /storm summoning Corruptors... they can significantly outdamage even fire/fire Blasters but they need a way to keep everything from running away. There are more than enough posts about storm summoning, although it is worth noting that Tornado is the (rough) equivalent of a Blizzard that is actually permanent (up spawn to spawn) but doesn't have the same radius, and also doesn't slow as effectively or provide the debuffs but it is up 3x more often and gets benefit out of the also damaging freezing rain (-30% res) so that significantly improves AOE DPS.

 

Single target with lightning storms? hehehe! A stormie, if the target is immbolized in some fashion, will significantly out DPS most blasters hands down. Especially if this Corruptor is also running the fire/ primary, then it'll just surge damage and land scourges along with the lightning and receives the enviable -30% res.

 

Blasters also don't have beyond their "flip flop" aim + build up and inspirations a way to maximize their damage directly. However, Kinetics Corruptors do.

 

Long story short Blasters on a team will actually do less than Corruptors THROUGH THEIR DEBUFFS AND BUFFS. -30% res is a big damage boost, and so is Fulcrum Shift which busts the damage cap for the ENTIRE TEAM, that is just something that Blaster doesn't do. 

[Darkir]

On 8/31/2019 at 10:04 PM, Hjarki said:

In terms of the value of support, you are correct - the Corruptor would be better than the Blaster for that purpose (except for certain very carefully crafted Blasters that are designed for farms). However, what would be better than both would be another Brute. A farming Brute runs around +325% damage, meaning that Fulcrum Shift can only increase their damage by 82% even shoving them to cap (and it does nothing for aspects like procs, so it's even less of a multiplier than that). In contrast, another identical Brute would exactly double the damage. That identical Brute would also have a much better chance of not dying in an intensive farm.

A brute's damage buff cap is 675%, now usually they have about 100% in +damage from enhancements also. If they are running at 325% that means about 425% with enhancements. This means that I can boost their dmg by 250%, while doing a lot of my own damage. I have tested the times on duoing in carnival fire farm maps with EBs and it is considerably faster to have one fire/kin corr and one rad/fire brute than it is to have two rad/fire brutes. This becomes even more apparent with 3-4 farmers, one fire/kin corr with the rest spines or rad brutes. Now, this falls down when you talk about clear times only of the shiva shard map and are stocking reds on both brutes, but then you have to consider that you have loading and buying reds time into it which ends up wasting a lot of time. This is why my SG and I use the longer map when we farm. 

 

In regards to the burstiness of blast sets it is true in normal content, but I was careful when talking about outdamaging a blaster to specify when on a farm when you are constantly surrounded by mobs and where being sustained at the dmg cap is more valuable than it would be in normal content where mobs are spread out. 

Edited October 3, 2019 by Darkir

[Radiaria]

I want to revise my original thoughts after having made a Fire/Kin Corruptor, and I would like to say that the damage I am dealing now with Fulcrum Shift on this character is the same if not higher than non-fulcrum shifted regular fire Blaster, and really overall just more because the entire team gets the benefit. Also, if this toon manages to scourge with her FS, this character can in many cases deal substantially more damage toward the end of an enemy's life.

Edited October 16, 2019 by 3333053222

[DeepRootz]

On 10/15/2019 at 11:51 PM, 3333053222 said:

I want to revise my original thoughts after having made a Fire/Kin Corruptor, and I would like to say that the damage I am dealing now with Fulcrum Shift on this character is the same if not higher than non-fulcrum shifted regular fire Blaster, and really overall just more because the entire team gets the benefit. Also, if this toon manages to scourge with her FS, this character can in many cases deal substantially more damage toward the end of an enemy's life.

I tend to gravitate to support over straight up damage.  I feel like corrupters utility is more of a fun factor for me personally, since I feel like I'm adding something to a group besides damage.  Some people swear by blasters, so different strokes for different folks.

Edited October 22, 2019 by DeepRootz

[DrBasics]

I have a weird way of thinking. As a blaster, you do more damage than a corrupter by 50%

 

So for the sake of ease let's say:

Blaster - 150 damage

Corrupter - 100 damage

 

But after factoring a team full of people fighting with you (I assume you would roll a corrupter vs a blaster because of team play) then you could also factor in the bonus damage that the 7 other players are doing because of your buffs/debuffs. So let's just say that every player is doing 15 more damage (that's severely understating it as well). Then 15 x 7 = 105. So when factoring it again, it would be:

 

Blaster - 150 damage

Corrupter - 205 damage

 

I told you, I have a weird way of thinking, lol

[Darkir]

On 1/6/2020 at 12:19 AM, DrBasics said:

I have a weird way of thinking. As a blaster, you do more damage than a corrupter by 50%

 

So for the sake of ease let's say:

Blaster - 150 damage

Corrupter - 100 damage

 

But after factoring a team full of people fighting with you (I assume you would roll a corrupter vs a blaster because of team play) then you could also factor in the bonus damage that the 7 other players are doing because of your buffs/debuffs. So let's just say that every player is doing 15 more damage (that's severely understating it as well). Then 15 x 7 = 105. So when factoring it again, it would be:

 

Blaster - 150 damage

Corrupter - 205 damage

 

I told you, I have a weird way of thinking, lol

With this thinking, which I would argue is valid, Defenders would mostly win in damage.