Nemu

I’ll answer both your questions. 1 - My build is more offensively oriented. It’s not really a glass cannon but it doesn’t have as much resists as some other builds posted. I recommend it, but people that think they need both softcap defense and hardcap resists to play an already sturdy AT will want to look elsewhere. 2 - Attack vitals is the gold standard for average builds. As you push towards the upper levels of budget and performance you skip the combos altogether and use blinding feint->ablating strike->sweeping strike for higher damage potential. This is much easier to achieve with defense armor sets. My build achieves it, vengeful slice in that build is is just a set mule for 10% global recharge and 15% global acc. It is not even on my power tray. You can absolutely play with combos if you find the mechanic fun. You won’t be gimp for using them and you’ll still be able to defeat stuff.

There are a few posts about this combo. Here's how to search for them: This is one of the first hits on the results page. It's still quite relevant.

I'll lobby for Ninjitsu. It's a lot better than the stalker version but it's always overshadowed by the obvious candidates. The +end power is truly unique and this set offers you a way to tank LGTF Hami/Mitos through both the -heal and -recovery debuffs without any outside buffs. Defense based builds are easier to build for if you intend to solo +3/8. The low DDR isn't an issue with intelligent play and I know you are fond of active mitigation. It's active, keeps you on your toes, but you do feel like a ninja with your kit. The click mez protection doesn't fit your criteria but I think you'll be able to work with it. The other perceived drawback is the lack of a taunt aura. I never found runners to be that annoying, and having a taunt aura doesn't prevent them from running away in the first place, only how soon they run back to you, so I don't really see it as a big problem. Now imagine pairing it with battle axe. A viking ninja??? A VIKING NINJA!!! The census done in march 2019 shows this combo as a real unicorn, I don't know how many people have tried and stuck with this combo since then but this is a very fun build with a strong immersive theme if you like that sort of thing. @Nemu

Since this part is only about primaries, I’ll lobby for battle axe. Reasons: - I know that you know that I know that you like unicorns. That is Battle Axe - It’s ripe with FF proc potential and mitigation (the fun and visceral kind) - It feels crunchy - Vikings! Too bad about Kinetic melee, you could make a truly unique hover blasting scrapper with it. @Nemu

You provided justification for not taking the shields, but you haven’t answered my questions. Understanding what you want to do with the build is the foundation of creating a build that works for you. It helps define expectations and sets a framework for the build. Some other posters will just throw a build at you without telling you how or why. I prefer to teach you to be a better builder. Hence the questions.

Looks like a solo build since you skipped the shields. What do you mean by "all rounder?" Goals and objectives with the build? Milestones that you would like to hit?

I just wanted to chime in and say that Voltak and that build turned right on a LEFT Turns only ITF, which invalidates everything he posts here. I turned right too...

Brainstorm. Why more people don't play there is beyond me. I have characters there more than 2 years old so it's not like they are wiping the servers regularly and even if they did so what? 5 min in character creation and you got you level 50 IOed to the gills character back with minimal effort. Things like economy, toils of leveling, all those pains that people ascribe on the live server go away on brainstorm. Go there.

I have a rad/fire brute on my second account. I use it to powerlevel my lowbies on my primary account from time to time. The brute is designed with a singular purpose - fire farms. It never leaves AE, it doesn't do TFs or join normal teams because it doesn't have knockback protection or even plasma shield. Despite those build choices it does fire farms exceptionally well, so much so that I never considered another build on another AT to do the same thing, whether it's another fire farm or a S/L farm. Why is the rad/fire brute the superior choice for fire farms? - 90% fire resist cap that is very easy to achieve through power picks alone. - 2 AoE damage auras that provides free damage while you are activating other attacks, both can take -res procs that further decrease enemy resistance every once in a while - 4 AoE click attacks that you can chain with high enough recharge so that you never have to use single target fillers - Taunt aura, to keep the runners in check, somewhat, and electric fences from patron. - Higher HP, combined with 90% fire resist and 45% fire defense allows you to afk farm if you have enough passive regen. clicking a heal or popping defensive inspirations and such all mean loss of damage. either you are wasting time not doing it or you are not using inspirations to increase your damage. I build my other toons on my primary account to handle regular content. None of them are specced for farms although some of them can do some farming just because my builds organically allows them to do such content. Conversely if I took my rad/fire brute on an +4/8 ITF or up against arachnos it would not fare as well, because the build doesn't incorporate tools to deal with mez/debuffs/damage types that type of content brings. Some builds are better at doing one thing than others. That said you can try to build every single one of your toons around farms with varying degrees of efficacy. If that's your thing go for it.

Ok, so it is used for fire farms, back onto the original track then. It's not about the quantities of AoEs, it's about the quantities of AoEs with decently short recharge that you can string together for a seamless AoE Chain and that's why dark consumption and soul drain don't add consistent damage to your output as opposed to just getting more recharge for ball lightning and short circuit to cycle faster. In addition, cast time and base damage matters, we'll get to that in a bit. The +recharge route helps you cycle BL and SC faster, compare that to your SD/DC chain, you can pull that full chain with BL/SC/SD/DC off every 100 seconds since DC is on a 100 second timer, otherwise you can pull off BL/SC/SD every 30 seconds. in between those cycles you are left with BL/SC + potentially 2 fillers, whereas a more recharge focused build can work consistently with BL/SC + 1 filler - repeat, those additional BL/SC casts add up over time, and since they both do higher base damage than SD/DC, they would far outpace the damage that SD and DC contribute when you look at your overall damage output over time. Since soul drain has lower base damage and long cast time than ball lightning I don't even see a BL/SC/SD sequence outdamaging a BL/SC/zapp or lightning bolt/BL sequence. Add the cast time up for BL/SC/SD: 1.3+3.2+2.5 = 7 seconds. BL/SC/zapp (fast snipe)/BL = 1.3+3.2+1.3+1.3 = 7.1 seconds. Discounting snipes single damage, your total AoE damage unbuffed would be 169+188+84 = 441 for your first chain with SD and 169+188+169 = 526 aoe damage for the 4 attack chain, and the snipe adds another 760 single target damage. All at the cost of an additional 0.1 seconds. The numbers are all there in mids. If you apply those values to the damage cap, the difference is amplified even more.

You should know that my feedback references your build which I interpreted as a strict fire farm build. But since you've now indicated this is not meant to be a fire farm build, Time for more why's Why is fire def/res important for a non-farming build? S/L is much more prevalent damage type outside of fire farms. So why, for a non-farming build are you choosing to emphasize this investment into 75% fire resist and 45% fire defense? Especially the second build where you dedicated a lot of your resources into hitting 75% fire resist. Why do you think adding two powers, one with a 100 second recharge at best with moderate recharge bonuses + hasten (dark consumption) and another with 30ish second recharge (sould drain), helps your AoE rotation? With high enough global recharge + hasten + ageless you can get the recharge of both short circuit and ball lightning under 6 seconds, it takes a combined 4.5 seconds to cast both which gives you room for 1 filler attack before those are ready to go again. With your slotting which guts global recharge you now have to use 2 fillers (especially if siphon speed misses), but at least you have 2 AoEs, both of which do less base damage than either ball lightning or short circuit, every 30 - 100 seconds that you can throw into your chain. The trade off doesn't seem worth it to me. Why do you need the +dam from soul drain when you can already cap that with FS? Have you looked at the amount of time required for such setup? FS takes about 2.4 seconds which can seem like a lifetime, soul drain takes about 2.5 seconds, you'd be lucky if you can get one off on a fast moving team before stuff starts to die and the FS buff whiffs due to corpse blasting. And if you can reliably keep yourself and the team at the damage cap through FS, the only benefit of Soul Drain is the to hit soooo Why do you need the +to hit from soul drain going the route you went when you can instead build for more recharge and pick up +acc bonuses along the way? More recharge bonuses mean that you are not as dependent on siphon speed to keep your powers recharging faster and that's one less click that you NEED to spam, which makes room for more attacks you can fit in between your other buffs/debuffs. Also, missing with siphon speed won't feel as bad since you will still have a higher global recharge baseline. You also need to hit with soul drain, so a typical engagement when you start is not to start with FS but soul drain first, and then you need to be mindful to keep it up along with all your other buffs. +Acc Bonuses ALWAYS work, and like I said, has synergy with +rech bonuses since most purple sets have both that you can pick up organically. Also, if this is meant to be a non-farm build, a popular destiny for squishies without mez protection is clarion. If you take that you gut your recharge even further which means you are even more dependent on siphon speed, and that you will also need to monitor your end consumption and fit transference into your rotation. You can certainly stick to ageless, but then be prepared to pack a lot of breakfrees.

Let's take some more time understanding the Why's Why do you need more AoEs for a fire farming build? Rad/Fire brutes take electrical mastery for electric fences and ball lightning to create a gapless AoE attack chain because both Electric Fences and Ball lightning can be slotted to reduce their respective recharge down to sub 10 seconds. Can you do the same with soul drain and dark consumption and create a gapless attack chain with those two + ball lightning and short circuit? Why do people take fire armor for fire farm builds? Fire armor gives you a higher fire resist starting point so you don't have to make extraordinary investments in your IO bonuses towards fire resist, which allows you to dedicate slots to other bonuses, primarily recharge. Why is recharge desirable for a fire farm build? Recharge allows for quicker cycle of attacks and contributes to the ability to form a seamless attack chain. Incidentally most purple sets that provide recharge at the 5th slot also give a substantial Acc bonus at the 4th slot, which helps with hit chance against +3/4s It's impressive that you squeezed out 75% fire resist on that build, but don't miss the forest for the trees, understand the why's.

Battle maiden, dreck, and the unai demon farm existed long before AE. People will just move to those. PL is a tool just as any other tool. Anyone can use it, from seasoned vets that know how to plan builds and play anything with supreme competence to complete noobs that think all COX has to offer is fire farms and 6 slot purples in every power because they think that's what "maxxed out" means. I prefer the latter group use other tools to advance their understanding of the game but they can do whatever they want to do and I can't stop them. If they want to fire farm 24/7 and suck that's their right. I won't lose sleep over it because 1) that's what the star rating system is for and 2) I know I can carry their asses with all my builds.

Even for a fire farm build the only numbers you've successfully hit are the def/res numbers. Assuming incarnate level shift you are fighting +3s and some of your powers have less than 95% chance to hit. Go to mids->Options->configuration->Exemping and base values and set your base to hit to 39 to simulate your to hit against +4s. You can find the to hit value for +3s here: https://cityofheroes.fandom.com/wiki/Attack_Mechanics The point of a kin on a fire farm is to ensure the team can stay at damage cap. There are 3 points to this: 1) cycling FS faster helps ensure that the team can stay at damage cap. 2) assault gives a lot less bang for the buck when you have FS. 3) The mob siphon/stacking portion of FS is also not autohit and it will suffer the same pitfall as your siphon speed which in your build only has a 75% chance to hit against +4s. The below thread discusses the mechanics in the second post. When facing the easiest content in the game that doesn't carry any debuffs/mez, anything more than 45% defense and 75% resist is wasted bonuses, and you went over on both. With some rebuilding you can end up with much higher global ACC and global recharge. Since endurance is a non-issue with ageless, you also don't need the extra recovery slots in health and stamina. The challenge with a fire farm build is that it almost requires you to use as many full winter sets in attacks as possible to get to 45/75 which limits your ability to use procs, otherwise you can find a lot more opportunities for damage procs which can help you surpass the damage cap. This Villain build was built using Mids Reborn 3.2.17 https://github.com/LoadedCamel/MidsReborn Click this DataLink to open the build! Electrix Zazz: Level 50 Magic Corruptor Primary Power Set: Electrical Blast Secondary Power Set: Kinetics Power Pool: Leaping Power Pool: Speed Power Pool: Leadership Power Pool: Fighting Ancillary Pool: Flame Mastery Villain Profile: Level 1: Lightning Bolt -- SprWntBit-Acc/Dmg(A), SprWntBit-Dmg/Rchg(3), SprWntBit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(3), SprWntBit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(5), SprWntBit-Dmg/EndRdx/Acc/Rchg(5), SprWntBit-Rchg/SlowProc(7) Level 1: Transfusion -- Pnc-Heal/EndRedux(A), Pnc-Heal/Rchg(7), Pnc-Heal/EndRedux/Rchg(9), Pnc-Heal(9), Pnc-EndRdx/Rchg(11), Acc-I(11) Level 2: Ball Lightning -- Rgn-Dmg(A), Rgn-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(13), Rgn-Acc/Rchg(15), Rgn-Dmg/EndRdx(15), Rgn-Knock%(17), Ann-ResDeb%(17) Level 4: Combat Jumping -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A), Ksm-ToHit+(19), ShlWal-ResDam/Re TP(19) Level 6: Charged Bolts -- SprScrBls-Acc/Dmg(A), SprScrBls-Dmg/Rchg(21), SprScrBls-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(21) Level 8: Short Circuit -- FuroftheG-ResDeb%(A), FuroftheG-Acc/Dmg/End/Rech(23), SprScrBls-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(23), SprScrBls-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(25), SprScrBls-Rchg/+End(25), Arm-Dam%(27) Level 10: Siphon Speed -- Acc-I(A) Level 12: Charge Up -- GssSynFr--Build%(A) Level 14: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(27) Level 16: Increase Density -- GldArm-3defTpProc(A) Level 18: Maneuvers -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A), Rct-Def(29), Rct-Def/EndRdx(29), Rct-ResDam%(31), Rct-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(31) Level 20: Speed Boost -- WntGif-RunSpd/Jump/Fly/Rng/EndRdx(A), WntGif-ResSlow(31) Level 22: Kick -- SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg(A), SprBlsCol-Dmg/EndRdx(33), SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(33), SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), SprBlsCol-Dmg/EndRdx/Acc/Rchg(34), SprBlsCol-Rchg/HoldProc(34) Level 24: Tough -- UnbGrd-Max HP%(A) Level 26: Voltaic Sentinel -- BldMnd-Acc/EndRdx(A), BldMnd-Acc/Dmg(34), BldMnd-Dmg/EndRdx(36), BldMnd-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(36), BldMnd-Dmg(36) Level 28: Zapp -- SprMlcoft-Acc/Dmg(A), SprMlcoft-Dmg/Rchg(37), SprMlcoft-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(37), SprMlcoft-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(37), SprMlcoft-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(39), SprMlcoft-Rchg/Dmg%(39) Level 30: Weave -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A), Rct-Def(39), Rct-Def/EndRdx(40), Rct-Def/Rchg(40), Rct-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(40) Level 32: Thunderous Blast -- SprFrzBls-Acc/Dmg(A), SprFrzBls-Dmg/EndRdx(42), SprFrzBls-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(42), SprFrzBls-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(42), SprFrzBls-Dmg/EndRdx/Acc/Rchg(43), SprFrzBls-Rchg/ImmobProc(43) Level 35: Transference -- SynSck-Dam/Rech/Acc(A), SynSck-Dam/Acc/End(43), SynSck-EndMod/Rech(45), SynSck-EndMod/+RunSpeed(45), SynSck-EndMod(45) Level 38: Fulcrum Shift -- Acc-I(A), RechRdx-I(46) Level 41: Consume -- SprAvl-Acc/Dmg(A), SprAvl-Dmg/EndRdx(46), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(46), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(48), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(48), SprAvl-Rchg/KDProc(48) Level 44: Fire Shield -- UnbGrd-ResDam(A), StdPrt-ResDam/Def+(50), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx(50) Level 47: Tactics -- HO:Cyto(A) Level 49: Vengeance -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 1: Scourge Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A) Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A) Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A) Level 1: Swift -- Run-I(A) Level 1: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A) Level 1: Health -- Pnc-Heal/+End(A), Prv-Absorb%(13) Level 1: Stamina -- PrfShf-End%(A), PwrTrns-+Heal(50) Level 1: Shocked Level 49: Quick Form Level 50: Musculature Radial Paragon Level 50: Ion Radial Final Judgement Level 50: Diamagnetic Core Flawless Interface Level 50: Talons of Vengeance Radial Superior Ally Level 50: Ageless Core Epiphany Level 50: Assault Core Embodiment Level 50: Born In Battle Level 50: High Pain Threshold Level 50: Invader Level 50: Marshal ------------ | Copy & Paste this data into Mids Reborn : Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1549;725;1450;HEX;| |78DA6594EB4F526118C0DF170E92081101A25C54481125485CD6A72ED3746BE866F| |5A1E6177606073C1B0903DCCCBFA2EBFCD2F59B9676D9BA6EFD096DD6EA7F683391| |EE5B1FDCE9E13CCF1BC77536F8EDB95FCEFB9E99A533F67C7EEA34E3CE89A25CAD6| |6264A95CA62B956AA5866E4829A3533C61C9345255BABA84B7D73F2F2B21534E17F| 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|A8E4184032330F2847C41B1CA1D59D95F42B9C6B2AB5A0C4C4A335654D63D3FFAB6| |62571E941C57555DDD6FA103096C03177F62863A86C18949C85B15D7B1DF9758F71| |056F4EEA37DDBDB8A1D3F4706B166DDA0D0E42F07B40A01CDA5BA365B7DF6059315| |A562306E19CCDE076D1285C320A7346E12F1AABEE3C| |-------------------------------------------------------------------| Plenty of people hear 45% def and 75% resist preached and that's all they understand. Understanding why you do what you do will go a long way towards making better builds.

I'd lean more towards ranged options than melee especially for a pool build. Softcap or not there are going to be moments where staying in melee is a bad deal. Tanks might have a bag of HP but no reliable mez resist when you look at the overall build progression. A crab/bane can get pretty comprehensive mez protection with the level 1 pick (I don't count the level 24 freespec into Crab/bane Spider Armor as cheating) and still reach softcap. Plus procced out arctic air does a butt ton of damage, enough to alpha strike fodder. During the early levels single shot's -def can be relevant and that power can be spammed pretty consistently and be used to pull as well. Shield is interesting because the 2 def shields come early and provides coverage against all the positions. If I went that route I'd probably go MA/Shield brute to further take advantage of fury at low levels, and also storm kick for the +def boost. Tanks/brutes also have access to arctic air and I highly recommend that pool over all others.

Only relevant for fire farms. Is that all you plan to do?

It's a crime that most people have not embraced the church of SPIN. That's about the worst thing you can do. Heathens, the lot of you!

Most folks tend to ignore synergy and go with thematic matching combos like fire/fire, ice/ice, etc... Here's my heroside breakdown On the blaster side Fire/Fire/Fire is very popular, as well as energy/energy/force. Emp/Psi is pretty cliche and popular back in the day when people thought rocking their aura = doing their jobs and new people that played support wanted to be "sexy nurse healorz" and be congratulated on their "great healz" and pouted when people don't "gather around for RAs". Meanwhile dark/darkity/dark defenders stood up in their own emo ways against the Healzors tide and fought back. This became known as the great "Nurse X vs Dark X" war. Inv/SS tanks are pretty ubiquitous even today, and back in the day Stone tanks were "required" for harder content, you can stay on theme and go stone/stone, since you are already making fire armor brutes I'm skipping fire armor for tanks. (otherwise I'd also recommend a dumpster diving Fire/Ice Tank) Wolverine clones were everywhere when this game came out so Claws/Regen is pretty cliche, when dual blades came out with willpower there were so many DB/WP scrappers even though there was very little synergy, but I'd rank that as a cliche pairing given the history and context of this game. Ill/rad is the classic AV killer back in the days, and fire/kin trollers were the premier farming troller, so those two are both very cliche Sentinels are too new for me to give any historical context so I'll pass.

Early AoE potential and consistent leveling experience typically means you'll want to go with an offensive primary. If you want to pair that up with debuffing and some controls I'd recommend a corruptor. Water blast is all around consistent, and all attacks keeps you at range. Pair that up with trick arrow and you'll have a pure ranged combo where every level up brings meaningful additions to your toolkit. Alternatively you can try the blaster variant, trick arrow and tactical arrow share some similarities, and most blasters don't have to worry about running out of endurance too much when they hit level 20, I'd recommend the water blast/trick arrow corruptor if you are looking to explore playing with more debuffs though. Water blast has a self heal, so the only thing you really need are some breakfrees for mez protection. The combo also doesn't need heavy IO investment to do well. If you lean more towards the control route I'd go dominator, but perma dom is expensive and there's a steep performance difference between perma dom and not perma dom. Controllers just don't kill all that fast, containment helps but most combos won't do a lot of damage without heavy IO investment or late game powers like fulcrum shift. You can certainly still solo with them but I think you will find it tedious after a while. Defenders suffer from having their attacks as a secondary powerset. Some combos can be front-loaded with buffs/debuffs from your primary that you want to get ASAP such that you can find yourself with only 2 attacks in your mid teens. That doesn't spell a consistent solo leveling experience.

The recommendation depends on a few things: How much inf do you have/ or are you willing to invest into this build? Would you rather have something that blooms early or something that matures later? (ultimate potential vs consistent leveling experience?) How fast do you want to arrest stuff?/Are you more interested in exploring non-damaging options like controls/debuffs/buffs? What's your attention span and skill level relative to how busy some sets and playstyles can be? For example: Are you more of a "I stand/hover in one place and hit stuff" person or a "I'll move around to position my attacks and take advantage of movement/terrain kind of person?" People will say all ATs can solo that that's true, but some are more of a pain to solo than others. Some have a higher skill ceiling than others, and some require quite a bit of investment to shine.

Praetoria content is paced very well that you don't need to bump your rep to compensate for content gaps between the level milestones that grant you new contacts. In fact I have done that 1-20 run several times across multiple ATs on -1/1 setting stealthing objectives where I can, and I can still comfortably do all the arcs and acquire all the contacts organically. Any AT that wants to solo lowbie content should focus more on offense than defense. At those levels your investment gets better returns on being able to kill stuff rather than being able to survive. I don't even bother picking up shield toggles that don't grant mez protection when I run though those lowbie levels. What I will prioritize is anything that is a) passive and provides a free boost to my survival, b) benefits damage or c) benefits my endurance consumption/recovery. If you have money then go rad and start proccing rad therapy at level 8, Take Gamma boost as your starting pick and skip both alpha barrier and proton armor until your mid-late teens, you can also defer fallout shelter until your early-mid teems. Mezzes just aren't a big problem in the 1-10 level range. This will allow you to cram more attacks in. Having some sort of stealth is also beneficial. Some maps Goldside are huge and stealth helps you get to the end objective instead of fighting/dragging aggro.

Knockdown does a good job keeping stuff in the patch for more ticks, and if it's active knockdown you can also slot Force Feedback (FF) procs in them. Provoke won't stop stuff from running out of the patch, it'll encourage mobs to run back into the patch after they run away, how much time do you want to waste waiting for that? Provoke also doesn't have any -range debuff so you might also just get mobs that run out and are perfectly happy shooting you. Slows are in the same boat, they are subject to the purple patch and you'd have to invest in slows heavily to see marginal difference especially vs higher con mobs. If you really want them to stay put, nothing short of holds/immobs will glue them on spot and scrapper don't have an abundance of mass immob/hold options, knockdown is much more available. If you knock stuff down a few things happen: enemies can't attack you because they are too busy trying to get back up, they stay in the patch longer while trying to get back up, and you can also have a chance to proc FF, making your burn recharge faster, see the synergy? There are primary sets that offer good synergy via knockdowns with fire armor. Stone, ice and electric melee come to mind with guaranteed knockdown/up powers. Don't bother with provoke unless you want to dip deeper into that pool for fun shenanigans with invoke panic or even unrelenting and none of those powers have anything to do with keeping stuff in burn patches. The reason I'd take the presence pool for a fire armor scrapper would be for invoke panic first and foremost, as it has a wide radius, decent recharge, and is a good alpha breaker that gives you some breathing room. Unrelenting may give you a momentary boost to stay alive through the most challenging situations. Burn also does a lot of front loaded damage now so runners are less of an annoyance if you are just concerned about getting the most out of burn. And if you slot a few procs in burn you can one shot fodder on cast. Also, DO NOT slot any of the KD procs in burn, it will cause knockback because the ticks stack up very quickly to stack KB mags which turns KD into KB.

No, if you only need to stay in the air and not be mobile then you don't need hover. I've used the P2W temp fly powers for higher difficulty encounters when I absolutely need to be off the ground. Hover is cheap on endurance and much more desirable if you wish to move around the battlefield with more precise control, at the same time I would always take evasive maneuvers for added mobility, immob protection and -fly resistance. However most hover blasters I see are not the mobile type since they have no reason to move/position due to not having melee attacks. In my experience, those types of blasters that skip their entire secondary also don't burn through end as much as a rabid melee blaster that uses all their tools, so the cost of sustaining mystic flight/fly is much more manageable on those builds. TL;DR if you are of the mindset that blaster is all about keeping at range and pew pew pew in one spot then any form of flight will do. If you take advantage of your melee stuff and you want to constantly move around for better positioning/use melee attacks ditch hover, grab combat jumping, and use a P2W jetpack if you really need to stay off the ground for those rare occasions where it actually makes sense to do so.

I suggested panda roll as a travel power. That should priority #1 and many pandas agree.