New efforts!

[VashNKnives]

When I/Os came along and I realized how easy it was to build for the defense softcap, blasters became my my most played AT. I believe that I may have had more incarnate blasters than any other one AT, and I had two more up and coming with i24... I was especially looking forward to the way my dark/energy was shaping up.... aoe damage, debuffs, control, and finally a really good dark blast single target rotation. 8)

Missing this game especially hard this time of year.

[brothermutant]

This^^^Assault or Fire/Devices if you have the set up time and Electric blasters that could drain whole mobs were the only sets that really made me go wow I want to try that.I know Drain Psyche was used
a lot but without a team I could never really survive long enough to leverage it.I do agree out of all the
AT's Blasters felt the the toughest to solo.I would like to add Energy had the best FX animation or
whatever you call it.The sound and look of it made it feel like it really hit hard.

Yet it rarely did, which as a Blaster Primary, was kind of a shame. I liked blasters, rolled several and got more than a few to 50, never seriously played them on teams for incarnate stuff though, which should tell you something.

The "fixes" coming to Blasters were a nice future addition to a dying set, but too little to late for most. To their credit, the devs really tried to make Blasters viable on multiple occasions. The original Defiance (the more damage you take, the more damage you do) was a very NICE idea in concept, but was abused (who here remembers grouping up baddies flying real high, dropping so you take all but one point of damage, then nuking EVERYTHING into oblivion?). I personally liked the one where your first power choices (tiers 1 and two for primary, tier one on secondary) could ALWAYS be used as they were so innate to the blaster, you can do it in your sleep. That one helped a TON. And the future buffs of no end crash nukes and insta-snipes paired with a single +regen/end power in each secondary was a great step in the right direction.

Although, I think they should/could have done a couple of things better.
   1) They could make it so the FIRST attack that hit you could not be an Instant Kill (ala the falling till you take all but one health in damage). It would have to be two or more hits that brought you down. The timer on this would have to be adjusted so that it resets per bad guy or group I would think though.
   2) I think Doms got the "holy grail" when it came to mez protection; a power button that gave you massive mez protection AND refilled your end bar?!? Wtf man, that is nuts. I can see why, once going rouge was available, I saw a MASSIVE drop in Blasters and a huge increase in Dominators. Blasters should have gotten a power that was similar, sure they could change it up, but the same overarching theme could be used. OR, it could have been a progression. At level 1-10, your tier 1 and 2 powers could be cast whenever you had the juice; levels 11-25, freed up tier 3; etc all the way to tier 4 or 5. I think that would have made for a much better Blaster buff.
   3) Blasters really needed that better regen; I would have made it so that they regen OUT OF COMBAT faster than any other toon OR increase their out of combat regen proportional to their Health (not counting healers/regens/WPs). This would have encouraged them to go from group to group a little quicker solo. Another alternative is kind of like what they did for defenders (man I loved that +Dmg buff when solo) so that blasters healed better when solo. Just a thought.
   4) Really, blasters just had too little health and too little resistances (yes, not defense, resistances). Lets face it, you are gonna get hit at least a couple of times in a big +4x8 solo fight with no one to take the beating (not counting the ability to snipe/send in pets/and many other cool "tricks" employed by some of the sets...not all blaster sets had "tricks"). So defense, which was relatively easy to IO set bonus for, was not really the Blasters main problem; it was their health and resistances. I don't see why something with such LOW health, even at their Cap, could not have had Tank/Brute level of resistances. A BETTER alternative to me that I posted when the game was running was an obvious superhero caveat was the "I am immune to FIRE damage (mostly) as I am a FIRE/FIRE toon. And for those that say things like "what about Archery or AR? What about them?", I say give those classes (LAME) resistances to all damage types. Now I am not suggesting that a Fire/Fire Blaster should be immune to fire damage, BUT for your Primary, they could give you an inherent 10% resist to Fire, and if you chose Fire as the secondary, it would jump t0 20% (unaugmentable, of course). If you SPLIT your primary and secondary (say Fire and Ice), you would get 10% fire resistance and 5 or 7% Cold Resistance.

TL;DR sorry for the ramblings but I always wanted Blasters to be a little cooler.

[HEATSTROKE]

I thoroughly enjoyed every blaster I played and I never viewed blasters as some horribly broken AT that was unplayable. I think one of the keys was knowing what your blaster could do and then do that very well. I hardly ever solo'd I always played with friends but even when I did solo I prioritized my targets.

I think a lot of issues was people couldnt do blasters on +4/x8 and somehow that became the measuring stick of whether a character was good or not. And since most people couldnt do that on a blaster.. then blasters sucked..

However I was looking forward to the Issue 24 changes greatly and was very disappointed when the game closed that blasters which were already good were going to get much better.

[VashNKnives]

I have to say that I am not surprised by the dislike for blasters due to mez protection issues, but combining inspirations to make breakfrees really solved that for me.

My permadoms, controllers, warshade, scrappers, corrupters, brutes, stalkers, masterminds, and widows were all fun at high levels with I/Os, but my blasters felt downright uber after I/Os. Although, I was not/am not one to shy away from the use of aid self. My blasters could do incarnate areas (like in the IDF - I believe it was called) so fast that I often felt bad for others trying to keep up.

However, you really did benefit from playing an aggro controlling AT first before playing a blaster. My very first out-of-the-tutorial character was an ice/fire blaster way back before I/Os... I remember running from trolls in Skyway and a passing warshade taking pity on me. I stared in awe at the awesome tri-former, but my own awesome I/O'd warshade never really became a favorite - although I did have a soft spot for the character.

[brothermutant]

Oh, those new power pool sets they were making could have gone a long way to making Blasters cooler. There was one with a mez protection click power that I probably would always shoot for on toons like blasters or even Trollers/Corrs/MMs/Defs that didn't get a mez protection power in their sets. And if you think mez won't get you if your def is high enough, my Grav/FF troller will tell you otherwise. Fun fact: Dispersion Bubble protected from Mezzes except Sleep. Guess who was slept all the time? Too late, it was me. Bastages were the first targets I tried to lock down. As for the "take a break free and fight on" crowd, I always forgot to get/make/use those in fights. Only time I ever ran with skittles was to either PL myself in AE missions, or when I self rezzed and needed to not face plant immediately after. Otherwise, it was "eat blues when low on End, eat greens when low on health". That was pretty much it for my use of the inspirations; a shame, I know.

Those new sets even had a cool "shield" protection power in there and I may have tried that as well to see which made my Blasters tough enough to solo more frequently.

[Vee]

I always had fun on blasters. My not playing them much wasn't due to the underperformance (i had no problem playing underperformers) but due to the fact that my mids-fu didn't seem to extend to them. My nrg/nrg was the only one I ever made a build I was satisfied with enough to actually IO out. Was hoping the i24 changes would have fixed that but alas.

[Drauger9]

I'm in the not a blaster fan crowd, I did get one or two up to 50 though. My archery/EM I think it was, I got to 50 and IOed it out. I could farm, not at +4x8 but at +2x6 (old school farming :P). There was another one I got to 50 but I can't remember it. The main reason I wasn't a blaster fan was, I was to busy leveling up MMs and farming.

[worldweary]

Blasters could be fun if you liked playing crazy edge of your seat could die the next second or if in a team setting where you could really unload with a high recharge build.It's interesting that Doms are said to be  better than Blasters but Red side AT's were more powerful as a whole or maybe it just seemed that way
because people that played villains seemed to be more knowledgeable overall.

[blacksly]

I think a lot of issues was people couldnt do blasters on +4/x8 and somehow that became the measuring stick of whether a character was good or not. And since most people couldnt do that on a blaster.. then blasters sucked..

This is a pretty understated point. Blasters, with their high AoE damage and weak defenses, are the best trash-mob killers in CoH. And while it may not be glamorous, killing lots of mobs that aren't high level above you IS a useful function to perform. Blasters clearly are the worst at +4/x8, but they are probably a lot closer to the average, and maybe even above the average, if going +0/x8, or something like that. But that's not "cool", so Blasters are measured in a function that they are completely unsuited for, and their main strength is often ignored when people discuss how strong or weak they are.

[blacksly]

   3) Blasters really needed that better regen; I would have made it so that they regen OUT OF COMBAT faster than any other toon OR increase their out of combat regen proportional to their Health (not counting healers/regens/WPs). This would have encouraged them to go from group to group a little quicker solo.

First Aid was much more useful to Blasters than to other ATs... they took more damage in each fight, therefore they had more use for a shot of First Aid at the end of every fight to set up at better health for the next one. If you took First Aid, a lot of "decreasing HP at the end of each subsequent fight" problems were mitigated.

[brothermutant]

Blasters could be fun if you liked playing crazy edge of your seat could die the next second or if in a team setting where you could really unload with a high recharge build.It's interesting that Doms are said to be  better than Blasters but Red side AT's were more powerful as a whole or maybe it just seemed that way
because people that played villains seemed to be more knowledgeable overall.

Red side toons did feel more powerful to me, which is why I thought it was odd that red side was almost always so dead. Brutes to me were that magic AT between scrapper and tanker; Doms were what Controllers and Blasters wanted to be...a SAFE damage dealer; Corrs were so close to Defs, it was hard to separate the two out; and MMs, they were the class I think the game was missing for a long time.

I came into CoX as CoV was released. Had it from day one but I still played a hero for most of my time. And of course, I had no idea who or what ED was, except that everyone hated him lol

BUT, I will say all classes (including Blasters) were welcome on my teams once Going Rogue went live. We let Brutes try to tank for us, Corrs joined to buff/debuff while doing their damage thing, etc. I think Going Rogue was a GREAT idea and I think, if the game stayed on, an expansion to both Red and Gold side would have led the game to see increased populations of toons everywhere.

[pinballdave]

First Aid was much more useful to Blasters than to other ATs... they took more damage in each fight, therefore they had more use for a shot of First Aid at the end of every fight to set up at better health for the next one. If you took First Aid, a lot of "decreasing HP at the end of each subsequent fight" problems were mitigated.

Silly blasters, you just need a bubbler teammate!

[Aggelakis]

I didn't have any trouble with mez on blasters because I slotted the crap out of the use-under-mez initial power picks. Having those three powers available even while mezzed meant I never really felt mez ruined my gameplay.

[WildFire15]

I always enjoyed my blasters and my first and main character was one (Fire/Energy called Black WildFire) and had no issues fighting anything, frequently tearing up groups of enemies in moments. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I always got the impression that those who considered the archetype broken were min/maxers who exclusively played on maximum difficulty.

[Ankhammon]

Silly blasters, you just need a bubbler teammate!

Or ringers. Or any controller, defender, tanker, usw and boom the blaster became the leading kill shot magnet they were supposed to be.


BTW, many powersets had trouble with +4/+8. Even those that could do it usually relied on huge amounts of vitamins and/or teammates.

[Waffles]

My Archery/Psych blaster was probably my most powerful blaster, managed to slaughter most things at even level.

I heard Dark was pretty good as a secondary too, though.

It's a damn shame the i24 changes didn't go through. My Assault/devices/munitions blaster was going to become a god, after some testing to confirm that it obliterated entire packs in the opener.

[Joshex]

Are we there yet?

Who here wants to start planing Option 007, or Option MI?

you know.. they are on vacation... *villainous thoughts*

relax, I'm kidding! not like it'll be like in the movies anyways where the villain just leaves his stuff laying around on a live machine or conveniently labeled with obvious signs and increases of security as you get closer

Sign reads: "Warning!, turn back! No villains allowed beyond this point! we definitely do not have the CoX server image data on the machine behind these two strapping guards!, and the back-up data tape is definitely not in that file cabinet! also no! the IP is not some physical paper you can steal, we'd have to write up a new one to sign it for you, but by then you'd be in prison."

[VashNKnives]

Oh for sure there were ATs that could at least keep the baddies at a stalemate better than a blaster, but when all was said and done, my kitted-out super scrappers (except maybe my fire/shield - he was .... quick) still couldn't clear the room as fast as say my arch/fire or rad/psy blasters and the blasters were safe enough to get the job done for all but the craziest messes. Admittedly, the scappers had some seriously epic moments, though, and were much more capable to survive when the going got tough.

BTW, some blasters did have a much easier time at 4x8. For instance, the hot feet aura in /fire kept those heavy hitting purple bosses at bay pretty well and rad/ -Def made connecting with your big guns much easier ---   not to mention having aim and buildup on constant refresh and maybe tactics and maybe focused accuracy (unless that wasn't available in the epics and my memory is getting foggy). You had to really watch for -Def attacks.

Blasters really needed the buffs in i24,  but if /when Cox returns, even if we are stuck with i23, I will likely roll another blaster first thing.  ;)

[Waffles]

The main issue with Blasters for me was always flavor.

You're like Cyclops, your answer to every single question is "I shoot it"

Whereas, for say a dominator, warshade, Mastermind and corruptor , you have many different options suck as "I run away, heal, and jump back in, I steal their essence and raise it as my pet, I stun it and beat it down with my undead army", ect.

[triedac]

*pokes head out of closet looking for any kind of update* ..... *goes back into the closest*