ED was by far more damaging to my Blasters. The 1 ACC + 5 Damage really helped you survive. What people seem to be forgetting is that the IO system was to replace the 1x5 style of slotting.
Not having the new system in place when you axed the other system and then to tell people - oh nothing is different - this helps you! Was a load of codswallop. We can do math and the affect on tanks and blasters was very apparent.
To be fair, I think that's really not because of ED itself, nor did the Devs communicate poorly with the players because they thought that ED was BETTER.
You see, ED WAS better in terms of long-term DPS. It was probably also better in DPE. And it gave more room for +Damage buffs since you weren't slotted that highly for +Damage. So, it was better, right?
Well, what happened, I think, we can see in multiple Issues afterwards. Arbiter Hawk seemed to be the first Dev that understood Blaster problems, and that Blasters did not depend on DPS... they depended on DP10 (Damage per 10 seconds at the start of the fight), if not DP5. So a change that improved their DPS, but lowered their alpha strike, helped their long-term damage but hurt their survivability. And the DPS of a dead Blaster is 0. So the Devs thought that Blasters were more of a sustained-damage AT, but the best way to play it was with front-loaded damage as an alpha-strike specialist. From their point of view, changing the damage around so that it was less front-loaded but better in a sustained situation, was not really a nerf. From the point of view of players who depended on the alpha strike damage, it was a great nerf.
The Devs then threw around idea after idea, fix after fix, for Blasters, but I don't think that they ever got it. Maybe the solution is insoluble... maybe an AT that can put out large AoE damage, and do so safely if properly supported on teams, cannot be properly balanced for situations when it's not properly supported. I think that the problem is solvable, but it would have required some slightly different design of the powersets, and I don't know if it was solvable AFTER the game came out. Basically, if Blasters had some attacks that were lower DPS, pretty slow-activating, but helped their survival a lot, both AoE and ST, then they would have the option of using those and lowering their DPS (but surviving), or using their better attacks if properly supported on teams. But after the powersets were designed, it may have been a bit hard to do that.
Of course, it could have been done. For example, change Full Auto to Suppressive Fire, an attack that makes the mobs keep their heads down. The damage is lower because you're not aiming carefully for weak spots, but it lowers the opponent Accuracy and Damage for a good amount while the shooting is active, and for half the amount for a few more seconds. Plus it has a chance to knockdown every second while shooting. Change an attack or two in each powerset like this, and Blasters could have played better without support.
They did not, and good Blaster players figured out (especially before IO sets with their Ranged Defense bonuses) that Blaster Defense is synonymous with dead mobs. In other words, Build up/Aim, Dead Mobs before they get to shoot back is a good defense.