Nemu

If you don't want anything flashy, consider weapon mastery for some natural origin powers. Caltrops is an underrated crowd control tool for when you get into trouble and I find -to hit debuffs to be the death of weaker armor sets that lack additional sources of mitigation. Those armor sets have to fall back to the tried and true "kill or be killed" mentality and to hit debuffs are a huge roadblock. Here's a mock up of what that can look like, I chose to chase +max HP and recharge, and enough defense against most damage types that a single luck can softcap them all. The build has some added AoE knockdown. Those are not super reliable, but every bit helps. For alpha you can choose vigor core for more regen and some quality of life enhancements to accuracy and endurance reduction, or go Musculature radial for damage, defense debuff and more endurance recovery, or even Intuition radial for damage, defense debuff and slow. Natrual BSWP - Scrapper (Broad Sword - Willpower).mbd

There's plenty of choices. The fact that you see invuln tankers running around 80+ resists to most damage types is a testament to the choices available to the player. The fact that I can make a Rad/SS with very little +resist bonuses but a hecking lot of recharge and procs is a testament to the choices available to the player. The fact that I can run an Ice/TA blaster with loads of procs and can still hit 30% ish range and aoe defenses while maintaining the neccessary attributes need for a proc build (+acc, +rech and end management) is a testament to the choices available to the player. The point is that some people take a very myopic approach to making builds that focus exclusively on hard survival stats, and they miss the forest for the trees when it comes to leveraging their toolkit and exploiting synergies that can make their overall build more effective.

Building for defense is fine for the casual meta comprised of the leveling content from 1-50. There are plenty of people that PUG and exemp, where they don't always get on teams with optimal support and fighting mobs above their means. A few softcap builds can carry those types of teams, whether you achieve softcap through inspirations, team support or set bonuses. But as most people are casual players there is a lot of appeal in reducing the complexity of the playstyle required to maintain softcap. Plus the idea that they can hold their own without assistance is the feeling of "super" most people would want to chase in a superhero game no? Building for defense is not suited for Hardmode meta where 1) survival comes from teammate support and rotating barriers and 2) mobs are DPS checks that favor proc builds aided by team damage boosts 3) specific team compositions are preferred to plug the holes in survival and amplify damage Hardmode meta is super narrow considering the player base and the content available that cater to that scene. Plus casual players can always use a second build for that content. What I can't endorse are the builds that drank the tanker cool-aid and over build for survival. Past a certain point building for survival has diminishing returns when balanced against building for offense. This is more egregious in those builds that chase tiny increments of resistance like 5 slotting mule powers for just 3.75% resistance to S/L. Besides ignoring offense, such builds also blatantly overlook any synergies that exist in the primary/secondary/pools for survival and opt to blindly chase only def +resist.

The behavior with Guassian is what drove the thought process, I will know in 3 more levels (even though I can do this on brainstorm right meow, I don't wanna) 😁 I do want to make sure that the build can exemp at all levels and I have no doubt that my end woes are going to be drastically lessened when I get power of depths and even more so once I get power boost and Alpha incarnate. My experience at lower levels, especially with a few procced attacks with no end red, tells me that I might still need the pshifter or some sort of endurance boost for lowbie content. Time will tell once I complete my build and take it for a few lowbie content runs. Thanks for the feedback again!

Thanks for the feedback @Onlyasandwich! I will have to go through a few build iterations with him. It's my first time with Marine so there are some powers I'm feeling out. I am a bit enamored with the ice mistral set and that created a bias that resulted in some inefficient slotting. This is going to be v2 of the build. It's a tight build, and now I have 3 extra sets of ice mistrals for my next slow-mageddon project, whenever I find a good concept and fit for it. Mer-Panda FU Ice mistral - Corruptor (Ice Blast - Marine Affinity).mbd

Yup, I am leveling mine up right now and I don't get the clamor around marine solving your end problems with Torrential (maybe I read wrong). At level 29 and I'm only running 2 leadership toggles and Torrential is barely keeping my end above 0 and I haven't even picked up shifting tides yet. I'm hoping the max end provided by power of depth is going to provide a bit more cushion to run that toggle. I started putting Torrential on auto but it's tedious to have whatever you are doing interrupted every 17 seconds. I went soul mastery for powerboost, there's synergy there with torrential, reef and power of depths, and that means I don't have to invest as much into those powers. I went with a triple hold build, power boost also helps with hold duration since I fully procced all the holds Mer-Panda - Corruptor (Ice Blast - Marine Affinity).mbd

Reactive defense is 5 additional slots you toss in a mule power that provides your build no benefit. It might be a reflex for other builds where defense makes a meaningful contribution to your build. Rad/SS needs recharge, and you fully slotting a power for 8.75% recharge when you could have it fully slotted for 12.5% recharge instead makes little sense. Do you even toggle on weave or is it just a set bonus mule? If the latter you can also put a LOTG 7.5 in it and rip those slots along with some others that do very little for your build, like the Aeigis unique, and slot up other powers for recharge, for example boxing with 5 piece hecatomb for 10% more recharge and 15% more global ACC, which you also need to push certain powers to 95% chance to hit with a single rage buff. This might shock the tanker community trained to build every AT with resist cap or defense softcap or both but my Rad/SS tank didn't even take the fighting pool and has around 50% S/L res. Once you achieve success playing melee blasters, you come to appreciate the power of offense and active mitigation (handclap/footstomp/psi nado/GZ with knockdown proc chaining knockdowns), and you'll come around to see see how grossly overcompensated some of these builds that tries to hit those survival milestones are when this combo has such killing power backed up by more mitigation tools that are available to my sturdiest blasters.

See this post where I break down the cornerstone elements of what makes a proc build work, and why it's particularly well suited for super strength.

I am a seasoned melee range blaster so my favorite is probably not something you want to subscribe to. For beginning blasters looking for a pure ranged playstyle Tactical Arrow is the best secondary to support it. Most other secondaries have at least 1 power that requires close range and quite a few are quite melee heavy. You could theoretically take any secondary and skip all the melee stuff though. Plenty of melee averse players have done that. Nothing wrong with that but it's not something I endorse. If you want to go that route a sustain toggle that doesn't aggro mobs are the most beginner friendly. The secondaries that have those types of toggles include Temporal Manipulation, Sonic Manipulation, Atomic Manipulation, Devices, and Plant manipulation.

Congrats on your first level 50! It's a wonderful feeling. Parry compliments willpower well but at a cost of lost damage potential because you will have to constantly spam this low damage power to keep up your melee defense. If you are using it quite a bit then it is worth slotting, I'd lean towards 5 piece damage set that gives recharge and an LOTG 7.5 but that's really going to depend on how you slot the rest of your build. Typical scrapper builds will take at least tough/weave. If you can build up your melee defense to where a single parry can softcap it then it should be enough. Strength of will is a skippable power, most players skip T9s for most armor sets. You should not have endurance issues if you took and slotted quick recovery. But I can see how one would want to stack passive regen with physical perfection. There are other options if you want to augment survival from power pools though. As for the build, post yours and tell us your build requirements such as thematic powers you want to keep or goals you want to hit, and we can fine tune.

Depends on your budget. One of the best things about blasters since their revamp (besides no end crash nukes) is their endurance/regen/absorb sustain which most blasters get at level 20. You'll need a significant amount of recharge to get drain psyche close to perma, but the other blaster sustains are either toggles or clicks that are perma more or less out of the box. Drain psyche also requires you to hit a few mobs in melee range in order to work, so if you are not used to the blaster playstyle it may be more dangerous for you to use this power. If those are your only two choices for secondary I would recommend ninja, it has a stealth component and the sustain does not require you getting into the danger zone and connecting with enemies. If you are open to other secondaries I'd recommend one with a toggle sustain so you don't have to constantly manage one more click power. How you play blasters will also factor into which secondary is more beneficial. Most beginning blasters want to keep at range and hover blast. There are a few secondaries better suited for that play style than the more advanced blasters that can deal damage at any range and have the survival tools to handle themselves in close combat. Tactical Arrow is hands down the best secondary to compliment a pure range play style.

That's not what I'm getting at. Poster has a tendency to ask "what's best" instead of sharing insight into "what do I really want and what are MY requirements and success criteria?" I'm just trying to help him/her narrow down suggestions to something that aligns with that. I mean i can tell him the Elec/Dark is da bomb but he may find the play style a bit frantic, I can also tell him Emp/Dark has a lot of support synergy but he may find the lack of debuffs boring. All the suggestions I've seen are personal recommendations that are not grounded in any real requirements from the poster. When you don't know what the poster really wants how the hell can you help? Do more discovery people!

So many options, what do you think is necessary for your needs for such a team? examples like: I need to have a rez in my toolkit I need to be able to break people out of being mezzed I need to hang back and provide support or I need to be in the thick of it etc...

All these perfect builds are noticeably lacking in two things: No 1 - Panda No 2 - SPIN Therefore I declare them not quite so perfect. Having said that let me demonstrate what a REAL perfect build looks like:

I don't pvp but back on live if you wanted an emp for PVP you went illusion/emp for pure support , and empaths were valuable as support for team pvp with clear mind as a main buff to provide +perception. They used phase shift to protect themselves from getting spiked, nowadays there's also speed of sound with the built in TP to get you out of trouble. Other PvP experts can chime in but that kind (actually any) of pvp is mostly dead on homecoming from what I gather. Viable can be interpreted a number of different ways. If you are enabling people on your team that deserve to be enabled, like helping the dom that is locking down everything achieve perma dom easier via adrenaline boost, or enabling the fearless blaster to nuke and obliterate everything without the hassle of getting mezzed, then you are making a difference. It may not be noticeable and people will probably not shower you with dumb comments like "nice heals!" But you know you are making a difference. If you want to make a noticeable difference then under-powered teams tacking content slightly above their capabilities is a good place to hang out. There your heals and buffs and other contributions matter. Maybe +1 or +2 /8 content. Above that threshold emps start to falter on these under-powered teams because they won't be able to keep up with incoming damage. That's where mass aoe buffing/debuffing sets like forcefield/cold dom/storm etc... start to show their value much more noticeably.

If you care about losing damage you wouldn't put it in footstomp, it recharges in 20 seconds base compared to 60 seconds base for rad therapy. I consider 3 damage procs worth of damage loss from footstomp for one cycle of rad therapy much more substantial than one damage proc worth of damage loss from that same cycle of rad therapy. Putting it in punch won't have it proc as reliably and are you really going to put punch into your attack rotation if you care about damage? If I recall different sources of absorb stack. So that's not an issue. But I haven't come up with many scenarios in actual play where that absorb proved critically relevant. I don't put it in ground zero because GZ is my opener and I put an avalanche knockdown proc to create some mitigation to go through the rest of my AoE cycle.

SGF proc goes in rad therapy to help with recharge. It's not an essential proc like the might of the tanker proc since rad armor already provides a good amount of absorb, but if you are going to use it, use it more for its recharge enhancement component for longer recharging powers, and treat the proc as incidental.

Depends on team make up. Need more details.

Great questions that deserve thought out responses. Here's the current state of empathy: TLDR - empathy is overshadowed by more modern powerset designs that include both buffs and debuffs, and healing was never the king of mitigation as it is in some traditional MMOs. Focusing on being a healer has no place in this game, but that doesn't mean that healing has no place. Even with the influx of new players you will typically find that you will get carried on teams if any of them has one or 2 well designed builds exemped down from level 50. The reality of being an empath in today's COH is that you have very little to do if you just focus on healing. Also, your buffs are largely not needed for most well made builds for general content. Speaking from personal experience, a few of my blasters run at range/smashing/lethal defense softcap backed up by mitigation and sheer killing speed, as well as endless endurance from the blaster sustain, such that I don't NEED regeneration/recovery aura or fortitude to be self sufficient. I appreciate them, but I'm self sufficient as it is without those buffs. The one and only ONE buff I need is Clear Mind. Mez immunity is not something I can get from IO sets, yet most emps I run across don't use this power to protect those ATs that don't have mez protection, citing they'd rather blast and contribute damage. IMO you can do both, it takes more work, but that's what separates good emps from not so good ones - the ability to manage your time between buffs, healing and blasting and prioritize your targets for who gets what buff. I hope all your concerns about getting mezzed yourself translates to an appreciation of the impact of CM on other players that lack mez protection, and that you will use that power appropriately on other such players. Onto the build itself, it's a balancing act, but you can strive towards all your goals and not lean into any one extreme. You can blast and contribute damage, and have enough recharge to keep a decent number of teammates buffed, and build for some personal defense. Auroxis' build hits those points. The good thing about ice blast is that most attacks animate fast, so you are not stuck in attack animation too long waiting to execute a critical heal/buff. A solid approach is to build towards 32.5% range defense so a single luck will softcap your range defense. On survival, here's the secret to survival when playing in a group for general content: Know where to stand and where not to stand, and know when to attack and when not to attack. Poor empaths will hug the tank and spam healing aura. Smart empaths will bounce around and buff/heal as needed but will make sure they are not planting themselves where they can be hit with AoE splash damage/debuffs or be too far away from the rest of the team such that they can't get help when they are in trouble. You ever see those newbie players getting chased by a boss they can't possibly kill run further and further away from the team while still trying to attack said boss? Don't be like those guys, learn to position yourself but always come back to the team, it will do far more for your overall expertise at this game and survival than just building for softcap defense and hardcap resists. I can't tell you the number of times I've seen hovering players that think they are safe above get caught with an immobilize/-fly effect and now they are down on the ground right in the midst of all the AoE splash damage, their stats debuffed and movement speed slowed down to a halt and they just stand there helpless trying to slow mo run out of the danger zone and ultimately die. If I were to adjust Auroxis' build it would be to drop the flight pool for combat jumping for immob immunity and use jousting to stay mobile, and to pick up more slow resist to make sure your can run out of slow patches and not be adversely affected by recharge debuffs. I'd also drop assault or tactics (I prefer tactics because I hate being blinded, and tactics helps your to-hit which is synergistic with proc attacks) that way you can fit in boxing/tough/weave if you wish for added defense/resists, or go mystic flight route for rune of protection if mez protection is a bigger priority for you. on the topic of why range defense is important and jousting see this thread: Don't worry about debuffs, most general content is going to get steamrolled as I mentioned, and extra Achilles' heel or Annihilation -res debuff will not make a meaningful difference for most of that content. I'd opt for damage procs if you want more damage to help you out in solo situations. Auroxis' has those in freeze ray and bitter ice blast. You will not have the ability to heavily proc all your stuff, so those 2 single target attacks is good enough.

I solo lower levels at -1/0. this way I hit more and kill stuff in less time. A good chunk of your leveling xp comes not from killing stuff in missions but in mission and story arc completion bonuses. During the early levels your everything sucks, why make it harder for you by bumping up the difficulty? Think less about xp/mob but more xp/hour. Once you have some foundational elements built up by your late 20s or mid 30s THEN you can ramp up difficulty. Generic advice about endurance management also overlook your built-in toolkit from your primary/secondary. Some are more endurance friendly than others. There are plenty of brute armors that offer endurance management. I find the recovery serum temp power, which you can purchase from the START vendor, is all I need on most of my endurance hungry builds at the early levels.

6 slot preemptive optimization for the recharge and range defense bonus. If you are running hotfeet and spamming attacks you will need the endurance. The heal is inconsequential, at 95% enhancement value you are only getting what? 35 hp DOT heal compared to 18hp DOT heal base? When enemies are chunking you for triple digit damage? The heal is meant to help you top off faster in between fights, it's not meant to save you in a fight. I don't want to slot a power for something that only helps me in between fights, do you? As for damage in any damage aura that's also your sustain, not worth it. You get much much much much more return on investment with end mod slotting, when is the last time you played a blaster and waited for your damage aura to finish off mobs that can take off 1/4 of your life in one hit? 1hp or not that mob is getting another blast in the face now. Slot it with end mod and you can skip the miracles and numinas that you've been trained to slot into every build. You know how I can tell if a person has never played a blaster before? Those uniques in health.

You can split up the superior vigilant assault set into 2 for 2 x 10% global recharge. You can get rid of all the procs in your attacks because those are slots that can be used for more recharge or more useful bonuses like defense or slow resist. All that recharge and it all gets neutered when some slows land on you. If your game plan is to sit back and support then range defense can help you avoid getting hit. Hover by itself is pretty slow at lower levels, I would drop the entire leadership pool for fly and evasive Maneuvers and replace Maneuvers with Stealth so you can stack that with the stealth IO in sprint. You still get the same recharge bonuses, but you gain a bit of quality of life for combat movement and total invis. I'd also swap out teleport for combat teleport so you have a faster way to TP in and out of combat. Your build has ridiculous recharge, this revision has ridonculous recharge and a decent bit of range defense. legacy_mids_build(2).mbd Just make sure you proactively CM the squishies. Think about the times you get mezzed and how annoying that is. Nothing makes me sadder than to see a "healer" waste their potential by not using the ONE buff most well built builds without mez protection care about.

I would make an Elec/Staff/Mu with whirlwind to SPIN and SAP. Honestly any attack set with reliable AoE knockdown will work in assisting with buying you enough time to sap, but when's the last time you used whirlwind? Come join the Church of SPIN. Gonna counter Betty's take on Dark/Elec and the prevailing damage oriented meta. This game accords players enough cushion to make/copy really bad builds (like so bad I'd throw up in my mouth twice) or explore off the beaten path. Gimmicky builds can be both viable and fun. When you've made your 10th or 20th procced out or softcapped/resist capped character, it may be a breath of fresh air to do something totally different. Here are some examples: My Church of SPIN devotees: Princess Spinaroonie i5 p27 RoP Uber Recharge.mbd Hover blasting scrapper?

Other considerations: Ice/Spines for the slows Elec/Staff/Mu + Whirlwind for the SPINs and the knockdowns and the Saps

Dual blades. Pick a passive secondary like super reflexes and build for recharge and stick to quick cast powers like blinding feint, ablating strike and sweeping strike. You'll feel like a blender. Now you are a speedster with freaking swords!