Nemu

Back in my days, when positron was a 9 hour TF with level locked foes, Stone melee was a classic pairing for Ice Armor. It was an optimal pairing for the soft control via fault, the other contender was dark melee for the self heal spam and -to hit. While dark melee has fallen behind post homecoming, stone melee still holds up. Its end woes was already somewhat mitigated by energy absorption back in the days and now even more with IOs and set bonuses and Alpha incarnate.

Scrappers do this too. However, unlike self conscious stalkers, they don't notice this phenomenon because of this thing called scrapperlock, coined after the famous Sir Scrappercous Locksley, which in ancient viking means "taste the piss of my axe."

I'm sure the build will do ok on a team with buffs and solo with inspirations. It will depend on the type of content you run. If you are running mostly level 50 content where judgement/destiny is being spammed all the time then even an unslotted build with brawl as the only attack will do. If you exemp a lot or if you aspire to be a hardmode content runner then you will need to dial your build in for those purposes. As for the build, It's a hodge podge of things with no clear direction at first glance, or maybe it tries to cast a very wide net on things it wants to do. (low-mid defenses but you invest a lot of slots in hover/aim, recharge is not too high given how you went and proced a few attacks and not putting that 5th apocalypse slot in bitter freeze ray instead of bitter ice blast, etc...) People that dedicate their blaster to teaming tend to go all out on offense and leave survival to team buffs People that dedicate their blasters to soloing tend to lean more in on softcap defense, for you range defense makes more sense than S/L There is a middle ground, where people shoot for 32.5% defense to be covered by a single luck to softcap (or team buffs), and dedicate the rest to offense I know you mentioned teaming, damage and defense. Knowing that you can't do everything in a single build. How would you rank what's most important for you for this blaster build for the type of content you want to run?

Regen is one of those sets that you really do need to be nitpicky about what you pair it with for best outcomes. Any set that doesn't have a dearth of AoE knockdowns to spam is less desirable to pair with regen, for two reasons: 1 - Knockdown consistently works better against all ranks of critters than other forms of control, with very few exceptions 2 - AoE Knockdown feeds force feedback procs. A regen build will be juggling between procs/acc bonuses, slow resist and other set bonuses. It needs to compensate for not going all-in on recharge bonuses from somewhere. FF procs are the panacea. There's a reason Betty chose SS and Stone melee. They offer synergy pairing wise and more efficient slotting build-wise, without needing to overly invest into set bonuses to cover a lot of the survival/offensive elements that needs to be covered.

I was around when this information was documented. Blasters generally do enough damage not to be overly reliant on procs. A lot of the build meta for solo play leans towards tank mage nuke machines and a lot of set bonuses and thus slots are dedicated to survival. If there were any powers deserving of procs it would typically be the 16 second recharge hold in some secondaries or an epic hold. I wouldn't go out of my way to invest in those. Mez is a part of blaster life and builds will never 100% solve for it. Inspcombine breakfrees during downtime and proactive usage of them should be second nature to you when playing a hyper-aggressive blaster. If you really want a partial solution for mez, get rune of protection down the mystic flight pool instead of acrobatics. 4 points of kb protection is enough to prevent you from chain KDed and there are only a few kb powers that will actually knock you. If you need more, then you can always get the base craft or stick another kb prot IO somewhere. I honestly have not seen that power taken since 2020 when people figured out how easy it was to kit out their characters on homecoming. I think over time you might change your outlook on slow resist. You don't miss it when you don't need it but when you get hit by -recharge debuffs or caltrop patches, you'll wish you had more. I'd also not get overconfident about ice patches ability to protect you in melee, with 34% S/L defense I'd still joust frozen aura to minimize exposure. That way if you happen to get mezzed while executing your melee attacks, you will put some distance between you and the enemy when you finish execution.

I have been saying this to people that justify taking hotfeet on blasters because "damage auras do so much damage over time" for fucking years. No blaster is going to wait for a damage aura to finish off a mob, they are getting another fireball to the face NOW! As for VG, it requires synergy within the build and it's a power to be built around. In today's fast moving meta where everyone is throwing their judgements, exemped blasters nuking by level 21, I can see how it or any of the Poison debuffs fails to add much value. But at least you can use the spits before you get to the mob, and you don't have to adjust your build to make sure survival is taken care of when you hop into the fray with VG on. The biggest problem with PBAOE auras for squishies is that they don't account for stuff outside of their zone of interaction (in addition to not having a standard radius across the board). Why invite yourself to danger when things are dying quickly, a lot of times before you even get to the danger zone anyway? Having said that I would make poison builds that are built around VG, controllers are better because of stacking auras from the primary such as incendiary aura or arctic air. Those builds are super gimped on damage but I enjoy the passive "I neuter mobs just by playing walking simulator" playstyle every once in a while.

The typical pairing of proc heavy builds is to use Musculature to improve the damage slotting of proc powers that have lower damage enhancement. You don't want any alphas that increase recharge because those act as slotted enhancements and that will skew your proc rates for the worse. You will notice that instead of a 6th proc, I added a +5 Apocalypse damage IO because the damage average is higher with that IO than with another proc. But if I add a second 50+5 IO instead of another proc, the damage average between the 2 slottings are negligible. Muscalature will bring the damage enhancement level of dehydrate close to the ED cap.

Building for S/L/R softcap is more conducive for blaster builds that NEED to go into melee range. The rationale behind investing in those 2 vectors is that Range defense covers stuff outside of your zone of interaction, and S/L will cover a lot of incoming melee attacks to give you enough time to kill what's in your face. You take your melee attacks to accelerate the death dealing to things in your face, especially when water blast has a pretty weak suite of single target attacks. Your S/L defense is not a fail safe but a means to buy you some time, and you supplement that S/L defense with additional melee range soft/hard control like ice patch so you can stay in melee range longer and kill the things in your face. Your build doesn't need to go into melee range. And if enemies get close you don't haven any intention on standing your ground and going toe to toe with them. Range defense is important and should be softcapped based on your game plan, but all that S/L def set bonuses you are building for has very little ROI. You can probably get away with the base value that you have after your take and slot maneuvers/weave/frozen armor. Any defense above 32% means you can softcap it with a single luck, and that's a happy medium for your build and allows you to allocate those precious slots to other bonuses. When you hover over an enhancement you can push + to increase the level of the enhancement. There are enhancement boosters you can use in game to increase the enhancement level of IOs by up to 5. Do this for the level 50 recharge IOs in hasten and you will not need to waste a third slot there. This is what I would do with a game plan like yours. Tactics is essential for proc monster dehydrate to have max hit chance against +4s, which is my metric for to hit chance for all my builds. Some people settle for max to hit change (95%) against +3s due to incarnate shift, but I exemp often and +4s mean +4 for that type of content and sometimes even +5s. Blaster (Water Blast - Ice Manipulation)_updated revision.mbd Steam spray is a mule for range defense bonuses, but it's also a decent attack that rounds out your ranged AoE arsenal, you can either use it or take it off your tray, but the 4% range defense set bonus and the incidental 9% global acc boost for targeted AoEs offer a lot of value for the build. There are some power picks I'd push back for my own preferences. I like to exemp so I want to make sure I have my range defense setup by level 30. Dehydrate as it is slotted requires tactics to function (76% chance to hit without vs 96% chance to hit with), so I'd make room for tactics and weave by level 30. I'd most likely push out hasten to a level 32 pick and build up into the 40s. The only power that really suffers during those levels without hasten is Geyser, but typically you use your nuke ever other fight and 10 seconds doesn't make a meaningful difference in how quickly you are able to use that power again. I doubt you'd spam Geyser when you are half done with your in between spawn.

You as a human can dictate the flow of the fight by moving, whereas the mobs have but one choice to come after you. S/L is also no longer the catch all it used to be after the damage type revamp. Now mixed damage type attacks will check against only the highest damage type for that attack. Also, based on your statement of using ranged attacks in melee and that melee is an inevitability, why not take more melee attacks? At least frozen aura allows you to slot Armageddon if you really wanted to chase all the recharge. My first post there highlights my thoughts on why range defense is more important even on melee focused blaster builds Nowadays experienced builders don't chase perma-hasten just for the sake of perma-hasten. Liberal use of the force feedback proc can also help you achieve perma-hasten without over-investing in recharge bonuses. Honestly if hasten is a few seconds off perma it's OK, you are investing A LOT into getting those final few seconds covered via set bonuses and there are better ROI for those slots elsewhere. If high recharge is a goal, then there are opportunities to proc out a few attacks to get more damage out of them, since most high recharge builds will have a good amount of +recharge and +acc set bonuses which are per-requisites for proc monster powers like freezing touch. More and more builders are starting to see value in slow resistance and take steps to get a decent amount of it via winter IOs in their builds. A few -recharge buffs can dramatically impact a perma-hasten build with no slow resistance, so it's wise if you are going all out on expenses to invest in a respectable amount of slow resist. If you really want to solo hard stuff aggressively and have most of your survival bases covered via a build instead of inspirations, this is what I would go with. As I said in my post above, range defense is a better catch all for things outside of your zone of interaction and you will need that buffer. This build is designed so that you will have softcap range defense by level 30. You can also forgo theme and take scorpion shield so you don't have to wait until level 41 for your S/L shield, and take and slot steam spray instead of flash freeze. You can get additional slow resistance and recharge through base crafts. Ironically this build will be sub optimal for hardmode team content like 4 star TFs. Water ice Ice - Blaster (Water Blast - Ice Manipulation).mbd

Why do you build for S/L defense when your game plan is to obviously stay at range, since you skipped pretty much all the melee stuff?

Are you talking about the spooky ghost that Stan's Dad accused when the world lost internet in South Park? Definitely water blast

It is generically true that more recharge is better. But the fixation on hasten and perma-hasten is just another one of those conventional wisdoms that players parrot all over in game, in the forums and on discord. There are merits of chasing perma hasten for certain builds, you have to understand the purpose of why you would want to do so. Everything has a cost, extreme recharge builds sacrifice a lot of things to get there. See this post on my take on perma-hasten. TL/DR hasten is not the end all be all. Some builds don’t need it and you can do just fine. @Kalean I can’t name the builds that I’ve built for other people that are memorable mechanically because those builds are tailored to their needs, not mine. There are some builds threads where I go in depth on the methodology I use and I’d like to think those are good blueprints for people that want to dive deeper into making builds themselves: I have posted a few of mu own builds that I enjoy and I can certain share those here, starting with the reason I came back to this game: This is a straight forward softcapped melee blaster build. Rotating knockdown powers feels like cruise control when you dive into the thick of it. It is the blaste I enjoy the most. then there are the ones that veer a bit off the beaten path: There are more builds that I’ve postedfor other ATs but I’ll keep this response blaster specific. I will say I’m especially proud of my batpanda (stj/nin scrapper) and cowardly panda (kin melee/stone armor hover blasting ranged scrapped) builds.

Long gone are the days where experienced build makers chase recharge bonuses just for perma-hasten. Diminishing returns means that level of recharge only benefits 1-2 very long recharge powers like atomic blast and is wasted on everything else. Extreme recharge focus benefit ATs like dominators or controllers more because their toolkit consists of a lot more powers on long recharge timers. Nowadays you need a better reason than "I need perma hasten" to make extreme levels of recharge a focus for most builds. A better reason would be to supplement some of your attacks with procs to augment their damage potential. Proc builds don't slot recharge reduction in powers that need to be procced, and a high density of procs in those powers means you have less room to slot ACC and end reduction in them as well. Those types of builds need to be supported by recharge set bonuses, acc set bonuses, and end management tools, the first 2 can be acquired via building for recharge, as quite a few purple sets and the blaster ATOS offer ACC bonuses along the way. Compare this build to yours Recharge helps proc builds.mbd Still perma hasten, I gave up 3 seconds of recharge on atomic blast to improve the damage potential of 4 other powers. Added Aim so you now have two sources of burst damage and improved the recharge time on chronos itself, because that buff also improves your recharge for 10 seconds and it makes sense to have it up asap I take it that your intent with this build is damage and not survival so I'm not going to go into survival. You sound like you got it figured out, but if you don't, then you can come back here and we can talk about that too. I forgot my comment about power sequence to make it smoother for exemped content. You are not going to use end of time by itself before you get atomic blast and other tools so I wouldn't take it at level 16. Based on your described playstyle, you are going to be staying at range until level 30+. I swapped in cosmic burst, neutron bomb and your sustain to be taken as soon as they are available. I also subbed in aim to give you two sources of burst damage at early levels. I prefer the gaussian's proc in aim because that can help you cut through paragon protector mog. Leveling Sequenced Recharge helps proc builds.mbd

When you hit the view active sets button you see the pop up window to the left. It tells you there are bonuses over the cap of 5 of the same type. That's the rule of 5, additional set bonuses of the same type after 5 do nothing. I posted my comments before you made your last iteration. That one doesn't violate the rule of 5 anymore. The more interesting questions to me are: 1 - why do you NEED perma hasten? 2 - Time shift only stuns minions, end of time has a tiny 7 foot radius meaning you have to hug enemies to hit as many as possible, Atomic blast locks you in animation for about 3 seconds during which, assuming minions are stunned, anything that's not a minion is still attacking you. Factoring the cast times of the 3 powers you mentioned, you are looking at 7 seconds in which your enemies can get hits on you. How do you expect survive the crack back during that time? 3 - mob range will equal yours except in very rare instances. Also, what if you can't fly high? What if they toss a web grenade that grounds and immobilizes you? 4 - if you are planning to farm, do you know what makes a build suitable for farming? Are you aware of this thread? You can make a second account and make a dedicated farming alt if you want a farmer. This also allows you to powerlevel your alts on the main accounts should you wish to. Farming builds are very different than builds for regular content. While you can farm with your blaster in your current state, you are jumping through a lot more hoops than you need to in order to be successful at that activity.

What are your expectations for success for this build? Are there thematic elements you'd like to stick to/pet powers that you want keep? Looking at the technical elements of the build, you are over the cap on 10% recharge set bonuses. I also think aim deserves a power pick. I think some powers can be sequenced to give you a better experience for exemplaring down to do lower level content. The current build goes all in on recharge bonuses, why? What's your plan for survival?