Nemu

Jousting depends on playstyle and how you want to leverage your toolkit. If you take hotfeet then chances are you don't want to joust too much, as you want mobs running around distracted in hotfeet and taking incidental damage. There are complexities playing a blaster but if you want to zerg then just make sure you have a steady supply of lucks and breakfrees to softcap your defense and fight through mezzes. If you are not on a steady diet of luck inspirations then you have to learn the other blaster survival tricks and learn to play a little more tactical. See the below post on survival tips: Inferno solves a LOT of problems and even with fire/fire it does most of the work. Case and point the example in the above post. What part of /fire contributed to that story? I can get build up from a number of other secondaries. A lot of the accolades I see about fire/fire involves build up + inferno, followed up by whatever else in /fire, but inferno did all the work. Yes I'm aware you can use fireball/fsc/burn during downtime but you could just as well do Fire breath + Fireball and toss in rain of fire and achieve similar results at range while covering a larger area, and you get that chain by level 8. Given the number of hover blasters that post their builds here on the forums I'd advocate that latter chain for a blaster newbie and recommend something like fire/energy where you can skip the melee stuff if that's your cup of tea, pick up boost range and extend the cone of fire breath to make positioning a lot easier. The one place where the the claim that fire/fire does stupid damage is justified is for hard mode content where you are encouraged to stick together as a team. You spend a lot of time fighting at point blank range so fire breath is not as useful. In addition, for hardmode content, those blasters can also benefit from fulcrum shift reliably because mobs don't die to a sneeze, and a /fire blaster can actually get some mileage out of cauterizing aura and hotfeet's otherwise pitiful damage. When was the last time you waited for fulcrum shift on a blaster for regular content?

I don't know what you really mean by this, are you ok with using melee attacks in a blaster's arsenal or no? Your statement doesn't make your intent super clear. If you are open to punching stuff in the face with a blaster I'd highly endorse electrical manipulation. It has multiple tools to keep you alive in melee range and it adds another hold to your arsenal. There are not many secondaries that comes close to /Elec in terms of consistent, reliable melee range mitigation AND ST damage output.

I should clarify my stance on hover blasting. There's a difference between blasters that know what they are doing and choose to hover blast and those that endorse the idea that blasters are a pure ranged AT and one should skip any melee attacks in the secondary in favor of hover blasting. The latter wrongly believes that hover blasting is the most important aspect of blaster survival across all stages of a blaster's career. Most of the rhetoric I see on hoverblasting are rooted in the latter. It is the inspiration for the hundreds of hover blaster builds I see here on the forums. While I have a severe distaste for that rhetoric, I understand that my view on blasting endorses a very frantic playstyle compared to hover blasting. It's not everyone's cup of tea and some players simply don't have the mental or manual dexterity to play like that. I also fully concede that this game is easy enough that hover blasting and not using half your toolkit can still get the job done with a modicum of range defense so nowadays I don't fight that sentiment anymore. Still, mobs will still get in your face, you don't have the luxury of playing on open maps all the time. You need to learn blaster survival tactics regardless of your decision to adopt either playstyle. For example, instead of jousting you can still fly and pick opportune times to unload melee range attacks or just use lucks to make sure you don't get hit, but you need to understand those mechanics to be successful. I agree on the virtues of staying in one place for certain content, hover blasting or not. This is much more evident on higher difficulty content where blasters need to stick with the group for buffs/support. That falls under the first point under my list of blaster success criteria - knowing when and where to move (and when to not move). As for lost time during jousting and target priority, I solve that problem by landing right next to the target I want to punch/blast while I'm bouncing around the battlefield. This way I don't have to play whack a mole with the tab key. If I were less lazy I'd make a targeting bind for all the problem targets. TL:DR Hover blast for the right reasons, don't be that guy that stays 30ft in the air all the time missing out on team buffs because "hovering keeps you safe"

My first 50 on homecoming is my Fire/Elec blaster. Like you I had no funds and I had to start out from scratch. I've noted in many blaster posts in the past that blaster success is a combination of understanding game mechanics: -knowing when to move and where to move -inspiration combination and usage -prioritizing targets -using distance and line of sight -leveraging synergistic soft/hard controls in your toolkit -living by the mantra "kill things before they kill me" Regardless of builds or budget. If your idea of engagement with blasters is to hover and open with snipe and stay in one spot and blast you are doomed to fail. If your idea of nuking with pbaoes is to slow walk up to the mobs and endure them shooting at you as you plop down near the pack and stay animation locked for a few seconds before payload, you are going to fail as a blaster. People that espouse the "hover blasters is the only way to play squishy blasters regardless of budget and build" playstyle are lazy or ignorant people still living in the past, that haven't taken the time to learn and master how to play blasters. Builds contribute maybe 25% to your overall success, defensive builds gives you some cushion/tolerance for making some survival mistakes but they don't make you immortal. Back to my Fire/Elec, when I leveled it I was using SO/DOs, which ever dropped for me. I also didn't avoid melee but actively sought out opportunities to use my punches because they are my highest damaging attacks, because dead things don't fight back. I used combat jumping and jousting to take me in and out of melee range quickly and I used build up/aim for burst damage to end the fight quickly. I never stop moving, engagements is a fluid mix of punches and blasts with me not being in one place for more than 1-2 seconds. This keeps mob AI constantly switching between chase mode and shoot mode and seldom melee mode, where they do the most damage. If you want a tutorial on jousting watch the videos I posted earlier in this thread. There's also no shame in hiding behind obstacles. Using line of sight is fundamental to blaster success and what a lot of hover blasters don't get. Hovering in the air still makes you a sitting duck, but if you hide behind line of sight you control how mobs engage you. Use that time to pop lucks, buy yourself time for buildup/aim to recharge, etc... During downtime I was actively converting my inspirations into lucks and breakfrees, it's difficult at first due to lack of inspiration slots but during the mid 20s you should be able to always convert 1-2 at any given time. I used them prior to engagements that I knew to be tricky. Monitor your range and S/L defense, for those tricky engagement pop lucks till those defense values reach mid-high 30s and unless you are running +4/8, you should be able to do some "watch this!" shenanigans. One of the first IOs I got was the sudden acceleration knockback to knockdown procs. I put that in thunderstrike and force of thunder as I leveled up. So in addition to leveraging movement, inspiration usage, I also had some soft control tools to help me survive. And I was doing all the things I did on my level 50 before I even completed my build. It just took more prep. Target priority comes with experience. You play this game enough then you should know to burst Tsoo sorcerers ASAP, kill Sappers, interrupt sky raider engineers, etc... Also on teams, do not run away from the team and isolate yourself. If you get in trouble kite the mob back to the team. Summing it up, being agile and use lucks/breakfrees - blaster success. Staying in one place and not using inspirations - dead blaster. Most of the Hover blasting rhetoric I see in game and on the forums is from people that don't know or care to learn how to play blasters.

If you want to be a hipster, make a regen/staff tanker with whirlwind and show your devotion to the church of SPIN!

I prefer cryo freeze ray to Ice Arrow. It has a longer recharge meaning your procs are more likely to go off, and it's a good place for the decimation chance for build up proc. That proc has a proc rate of 1 trigger per minute, so you'd want to put that in your longest recharging ranged attack. Cryo also uses the gun so it fits well into your regular attack rotation. My take on surveillance is: You are a blaster, you are not a debuffer. If you debuff as a byproduct of attacking, so be it, but going out of your way to debuff a single target is something you can leave to teammates that do that better than you. The things that you will need that single target debuff for are usually things you tackle as a team. If you want to make this blaster an AV/GM soloer, then this power brings more value. I would also not go out of my way for +dmg bonuses. Blasters get a damage buff just by attacking, and going 5 slots deep just for a 2.5% dmg buff with shield wall is wasteful. I would just stop at 3 pieces, 4.5% energy resistance is not going to do much for you when you have less than 20% even with the 4.5% bonus. Weave provides more base defense than Maneuvers. I would slot shield wall in that so you can +5 the PVP IOs and not lose the set bonus, you get more ROI with +5 IOs in a power that offers higher base values. I'm also not a big advocate of 6 slotting reactive defense for the recharge bonus. Usually I stop at 3 for the HP bonus IMO there are usually better ways to get more recharge. For example if you dropped ice arrow and surveillance you can fit in cryo and ignite. With the slots you recover you can put a set of Ragnarok in ignite which gives you even more recharge, and additional global ACC to assist with proc monster cryo accuracy. My accuracy benchmark for all builds is against +4s. So I want to make sure this number stays above 95% when I set enemies relative to my level to +4 in Mids. The thing I don't like about flight is that both hover and evasive costs more endurance than just a simple combat jumping (and the fact that I am a big fan of jousting). Even though blasters have a lot of endurance recovery via their level 20 sustains, all those toggle still add up. I shuffled some slots around in the below build to add some more endurance reduction in your toggles. I'd consider musculature radial for more damage and more endurance modification as an alternative to intuition. In this case perhaps a miracle is called for in health, but I can see a preventative med proc in its place just as well. scoutythespeedyv Nemu edit.mbd

All fair and good points. My goal is not to criticize you but rather challenge you to challenge conventional wisdom that you hear from other people. Just like you, if you ask those people why they do the things they do, the majority of them can't tell you the exact reason they did it for their specific build. But you are better than that because you are here and you've repeatedly sought feedback, so I'm going to highlight a few things to enable you to think for yourself. Conventional wisdom #1 You need perma hasten on every build, meaning you literally have to get the hasten recharge down to 120 seconds and below using set bonuses - False. First of all there's diminishing returns on global recharge bonuses, some builds don't benefit that much at all from excessive recharge Second, you can use force feedback procs to make up a few seconds gap in hasten recharge, having hasten recharge in 130 seconds is not the end of the world. You will be okay! Conventional wisdom #2 You NEED a miracle/Numina/Panacea unique in health for every build. - False I can't paste screenshots at the moment so go through this exercise in mids Open up a new blank AR/TA build, just click on eagle eye to select the power for level 20 and click on the black dot on the right of the power to turn the toggle on. That dot should turn green. Hit the view totals button towards the top of the application and leave that window open, we are going to focus on the bottom half of that window Slot the numina and miracle uniques both in health and note your endurance recovery numbers (End Rec) With a blank build with no accolades you should see 3.33 endurance per second Now unslot all the IOs in health and slot Eagle Eye with a full set of pre-emptive optimization from the endurance recovery set You should see 3.8 endurance per second You maybe saying, but eagle eye regenerates my health so I need to throw healing enhancements into it too! Let's look at the numbers then Same build, unslot all the pre-emptive optimization IOs from eagle eye. For the sake of the exercise let's just bump up your max health by taking all the accolades, so go into accolades and turn on task force commander, freedom phalanx reserve and portal jockey Hover over your regeneration stat which should show 365%, click on the regeneration stat and you will see the actual HP/Sec regeneration rate, I have 21.99 hp per second Now slot eagle eye with a full set of numina, that includes the regen proc, Your regen stat shoots up to 506%. Wow! that's a lot right? Look over the actual regen rate - 31 HP per second. So, blasters are squishy, they have low hit points and very little resists. When you are staring at the face of death do you think an extra 10HP per second is going to help you live when enemies are hitting you for definitely more than 31HP per hit? These blaster sustains all do one thing really well, they give you a lot of endurance recovery. That's the aspect I typically focus on. People get irrational around anything that heals. But if you look at blaster survival, the most impactful stat is a mix of defense and kill speed. Dead things don't fight back, but you need enough defense to ensure you avoid just enough hits to live. If you are new, then maybe 32.5% range defense is still not enough, mezzes and debuffs will still get through, and you still have to manage a combination of lucks and breakfrees at that level of defense. The difference between 32.5% defense and 45% softcap maybe stark for you, and I think you'll be more comfortable with the latter. Build optimization tip#3 One slotting certain uniques as mules Look the slotting on hover and weave. You have the Shield wall unique in hover as a one-off and you have weave with Lotg7.5, lotg def/end and a cyto Total defense enhancement value in weave = 50% Total set bonus - 10% regen If you shifted the Shield wall unique to weave and replaced the lotg def/end and cyto with shield wall def and def/end and +5 both those IOs, you get for the same slot investment: Total defense enhancement value in weave = 57% Total set bonus - 10% regen, +2.25% max hitpoints AND, PVP sets don't lose the set bonus when exemped even if you +5 the PVP IOs I see the shield wall and reactive defense unique as single slots in a lot of builds. Tiny changes like this is what separates a well tuned build from one that just blindly follows conventional wisdom. Build optimization tip#4 Synergies Ignite does a lot of damage. But it makes enemies affected by it run away. Treat it not as an area attack but a single target attack. If you want to get the most out of ignite, you need to immobilize your target so they don't run away. Take electrified net arrow, it is much more useful than ESD - you can keep problem targets at range, immob pesky runners, even arch villains with 2 applications, and make them burn. There's also synergies in how set bonuses and your toolkit contribute to your overall goals with the build. As I mentioned in my Rambo thread, Tactical arrow's toolkit provides a lot of synergies with proc monster builds, supplemented by set bonuses that contribute recharge and global accuracy. I think you have a good grasp on picking out set bonuses and stacking them to get to your goal, but if you need some more examples: Also, 75% of blaster survival is understanding game mechanics. Movement, target priority, inspiration use, positioning, timing etc... Master those and you will have no issues with any other AT, except Kheldians and Masterminds, those two present more technical challenges with binds/macros. If you ever decide to dip your toes into a melee heavy secondary on a blaster, you may find this helpful:

I am not going to focus on your choice of flight pool, you can easily adjust a build to fit those in. However, I am going to double click on your comment about fitting in those LOTG mules as a reason you took fly. Have you asked yourself what's the real benefit of cramming this much recharge into a build? Compare the recharge of full auto and oil slick, two of the longest recharge attack powers in your tool kit, you have 98% global recharge in your build vs 68% in mine, yet you managed to shave off about 1-2 seconds in each of those powers. So about 3 purple set worth of recharge nets you about 1-2 seconds off your longest recharging attacks, would you consider that a great return on investment? Finally look at hasten, my build with 30% less global recharge is still only about 6 seconds off from perma, and I can still close that gap with a few force feedback proc triggers. First of all you get diminishing returns from additional global recharge. Second, some builds benefit from perma hasten a lot more than others, like dominators, where domination changes the playstyle entirely for that AT, or a high DPS dual blades wielder that aims to achieve a very specific attack chain and ignore combos all together. If you have no such goals, and especially on blasters where you have access to more attacks than you can spam, ask yourself what's the real benefit of such high recharge?

Do you NEED fly as an actual power pick or can you just buy the temp jet pack powers to fly?

There’s only one accepted way to build ar/ta. It’s been scientifically proven.

You forgot the lessons from previous posters to build for recharge time debuff (slow) resistance. You don't need 100%, but I'd shoot for at least 80% (if money is no problem) and you can cover the remaining 20% with base craft and time lord accolade. If you do have budget constraints you should be able to get around 50-60% easy with a combination of the winter's gift slow resist IO in a travel power, 3 piece synapse shock in stamina or quick recovery, or 3 piece ice mistrals (assuming you took a pool/epic power that allows you to slot those) You also need to understand how Regen survives. I don't think you do right now, because I'm not seeing the things you should be building for in your last build. First let's cover regen's weakness: No defense - you are going to get hit, a lot, not just damage, but debuffs as well Low resists (compared to other tankers) - you are going to take more damage when you do get hit, which is all the time How Regen Set survives (just the armor set alone) Passive Regen - the most intuitive because the set is called regen. This stat scales with your max HP. The higher your max HP, the more HP you regen per second. Prior to the regen changes this is the biggest trap newbie builders fall into. Passive regen is not the main regen survival stat, it's pretty much dead last and often ignored by experienced builders prior to the change because Regeneration had no regeneration debuff resistance. Now it's much better because that resistance got added in and you can get a lot of it, but it's still not the #1 priority. Max HP - The more HP you have the more hits you can take. There's NO excuse not to shoot for Max HP on ANY regen build with the aid of Second Wind (read the power description, it's not just a revive but also gives you more Max HP), which you should strive to make perma. Click heals - Reconstruction and Second Wind both heal, and you will depend on Reconstruction a lot to recover lost HP. Second wind is used more as a +Max HP buff that happens to heal. Both have long to really long recharge so you should strive to reduce their recharge as much as possible. Moment of Glory - 15 seconds to high defense/resist against everything except for Psi. This has a very long recharge timer compared to its duration. You should strive to reduce its recharge as much as possible. In this context, the most impactful tools regen uses for survival needs a lot of recharge. Since the set has very little recharge debuff resist out of the box (only 20%), you will also need to add a healthy amount of recharge debuff resist in your build so that a few cryo gun shots from enemies don't invalidate all your recharge investment and neuter the recharge times on the things you NEED, not just the click heals and MOG, but also your attacks, to keep you alive. Things you can do outside of the regen set to help survival: Get hit less - Avoid hits via high defense: not something you should strive for as a build goal, but when in trouble you can always pop those lucks to give you enough defense to avoid hits. - Prevent hits via controls/soft controls: This is why knockdown is so widely recommended. Knocked down mobs can't attack, and that buys you time to passively regen or click one of your click heals/MoG. Titan weapons has a lot of knockdown. - Take less damage per hit via increased damage resistance: If you take less damage per hit but your regen rate is still the same, you are effectively increasing your passive regen rate. That's why modern regen builds take rune of protection to boost ALL resistances, not just smashing/lethal offered by tough. - Kill stuff quickly: Dead things don't fight back. The tanker forums is notorious for builds that shave off offense to shore up every other aspect of survival. That won't work for regen. You will get hit and get debuffed. If you can't kill enough stuff to reduce incoming damage/debuffs quickly, you will lose the war of attrition. For any Regen build your most foundational focus should be the following: #1 - High recharge to make sure you survival tools, including attacks, recharge faster. Accomplished via set bonuses and application of the force feedback proc if applicable #2 - High recharge debuff (Slow) resistance. Accomplished via set bonuses #3 - Max HP. Accomplished via a well slotted Second Wind (heal + recharge) and should strive to be perma, which depends on #1. You should not need to go out of your way to focus on additional +MaxHP bonuses Powers that should be well slotted: Reconstruction - Heal/recharge focus All Attacks - Acc/Dam/End/Rech + Procs, avoid recharge for those powers you intend to proc heavily, pick one or two attacks, you can't afford to proc everything heavily Second Wind - Heal/Recharge focus Reactive Regeneration - Heal focus If you want additional insight into how to build regen check out this post I talked about all the things I just talked in the first link from 2020, in that 2020 post you will find a detailed break down on how I focused in on set bonuses to achieve the goal I set for the build back then. Obviously my take on defense on regen has changed since then, so read the thread for the method that I used to approach the build and don't just copy the end result. The rest of the links show the evolution of regen that Betty underwent to what became the standard for regen survival (Rune of Protection and Melee core hybrid rotation) in her last link.

The game is easy enough to not gauge fun factor by how much max DPS you can do with every single powerset. Think outside the box, KM has 2 range attacks and you can make a wacky hover blaster with it.

You can respec your build and achieve perma dom by 44, you just need to get rid of all the other distractions, like the +def uniques. Also, the 8.75% recharge bonus from the cupid set is generally a trap, just like the 8.75% bonus from reactive defense that I see in a lot of builds. There are very few scenarios where 6 slotting a power for a recharge bonus is the best option. Usually you can find a way to get even more recharge by reallocating that 6th slot. Level 44 Perma Dom - Dominator (Electric Control - Martial Assault).mbd

This might give you some more ideas.

There is a little bit of truth to your observation: AR has a slight ACC bonus to attacks If you are using short circuit a lot that has a bonus to acc Other than that you are just experiencing the joy of low level progression, this is normal. Storm blast isn't inherently less accurate than other blasts. I recommend running content at -1/0 solo at low levels. It's not the mob xp that levels you up quickly, it's the mission completion bonus and story arc completion bonuses that speed up your leveling. If you want to accelerate testing out blaster combinations, you can do this on brainstorm and instant level to try out all the combinations.