Nemu

High damage in this game doesn't come from stacking +damage IO bonuses. 2.5% damage at the expense of 4 additional slots is poor ROI when those slots can be allocated to helping your global recharge, which synergizes with procs since proc chances are not negatively impacted by global recharge bonuses (but they are negatively impacted by recharge reduction you slot in the power you want to proc) Here's your original build, let's use Fire blast as an example You have an SO's worth of +damage from set bonuses. Fire blast does 115 damage I removed the +dam bonuses from guassians, sudden acceleration and performance shifter, theft of essance and overwhelming force, your +dam went down to 18%. but I put a single damage proc in fire blast without slotting it for anything else Now it does 121 average damage, the caveat is that the proc won't fire all the time and hence "average damage", your average damage without the proc falls down to 99. Fire/fire doesn't lend itself well to extravagant proccing of powers compared to something like this: Mecha Banshee - Blaster (Radiation Blast).mxd Back to your original build - Note your unbuffed damage on blaze in your build, it tops off at 488 with muscalature alpha. Look at the damage potential for echo chamber in my build, this is a tier 3 hold that happens to do some damage under normal slotting, Cosmic burst Moral of the story is that procs can elevate certain, but not all powers from utility tools to heavy hitters (usually holds or powers with secondary debuffs like slow or -defense because they can take a huge variety of procs). The other way to think about procs is that if you are at the damage cap, procs and -resist powers is the only way you can deal more damage to your target. The typical approach to high damage builds prioritizes recharge and procs. The two goals have synergy because most recharge bonuses also offer ACC bonuses along the way and heavily procced powers do not have a lot of room for stuff like ACC/Recharge/endurance reduction slotting. Inferno will contribute the bulk of the damage you do in your career, so recharge helps there too. For Fire/Fire though, I'd worry less about procs. On Accuracy, a few things: Your accuracy is represented by the "accuracy" field on the left tab showing the power. It's impacted by buffs and enemy level. You can set the enemy level at the very top. +3 or +4 is where most builds check against. 95% is the cap, any overflow helps buffer against debuffs. All the stuff I circled on your actual power selection area are non-persistent to-hit buffs. Uncheck those radial dials so you can see your real chances to hit. As for your comment about fire blast, it's more conducive to think about how powers work together than to look at each piece in a vacuum. Yes Blaze and Blazing bolt do more damage. but they animate fast and you have a gap between the recharge of those two powers, even if you use fire ball as a filler blazing bolt still takes 5 seconds to recharge so you still have that gap. Fire blast can fill that gap. The fact that you can use fire blast while you are held/stunned/slept/mezzed means that you still have the opportunity to kill stuff before they can get close to you. One typical recommendation is to slot the full defiant barrage set into either your T1 or T2 blast so that when you are mezzed you can use it and hope to proc the +mez protection proc to break free. The other school of thought is to put the +mez protection proc in an opener like fireball and hope to pre-emptively trigger it, I don't have experience with the latter. I prefer the former for build/set bonus efficiency/ROI reasons. The build has a distinct lack of status protection. There are some low hanging fruits that you can address even with the blaster AT. Knockback is the most obvious one. there are many IOs that offer 4 points of KB protection, blessing of zephy 4pt kb is a easy one to slot into a travel power. Immobilize is the other, combat jumping gives you protection against that. It also offers superior (in my opinion) mobility compared to combat teleport or hover. Some people play blasters without it, I can't imagine my life as a mobile blaster without it. My advice to you is to learn movement if you are committed to doing high damage at the expense of survival. The following tips might help you on that journey. Some people will go as far as to grab acrobatics as well. That's your call. Most optimized builds are tight and you'll have to make some decisions on what powers you drop in favor of other powers. There are other comments I have about your build but I need coffee. Stay tuned.

I think it really depends on your definition of blapper. I hate the term by the way. It's a construction of yesteryear when people didn't figure the blaster AT out and relegated it to a "pure" range AT, and "blappers" became an anomaly. While that may have been true 15 years ago, it doesn't hold up now. Can you think of any other AT where it's OK or even encouraged by the masses to skip pretty much all of its secondary? We did away with taunt only 1 attack tanks, 1 attack pure healers with the medicine pool, etc... Blasters is the last hold out where this idea that somehow using all your tools from both your primary and secondary is not normal and deserves a name. "Blappers" are just regular ass blasters, they use both their primary and secondary, the same way every other AT is played. There is also a difference in the mindset that "if you use melee you stay in melee" vs leveraging melee attacks as another tool to be used at the appropriate time and place. The former is the the mindset of a melee player resigned to the fact that they need to operate in melee range, and the latter is how smart blasters operate. More often than not I see the former applied to the tons of blaster builds I've gave feedback on. If nothing else melee attacks are great mules for mako's bite which shores up range defense, or a set of hecatomb/armageddon for 10% global recharge, and by using those as mules you open up your build to other set bonuses instead of dumping/limiting all your slot investment/build goals into your primary attacks. I'm resigned to the fact that a lot of people will never move past their bias that blasters should always operate at PURE range because it's "safer", but I feel a strong need to correct this notion that you should skip all your melee attacks just by virtue of the IO bonuses they accord a build. (not that you skip your melee attacks, but I do see a lot of builds over the years that do.)

There are a lot of builds that fit that mold. What works for me might not work for you. I have softcapped melee blasters I have proc monster blasters that have less survival Mecha Banshee - Blaster (Radiation Blast).mxd I have meme builds that legitimize the use of whirlwind I have homage builds with guns/bows/RPGs. All of them effective in their own way. I find that having an emotional level of attachment also helps with the longevity of the character. Mastery of the play style also helps with how much you enjoy playing whatever you are playing - if you are good at something you enjoy doing that thing more. Otherwise you are constantly looking for the next peak in performance and chasing that high. With that, Jezebel is the reason I yearned for COH's return and came back to Homecoming. Full transparency though, I built her on live after I learned about real numbers/softcap and the value of cast time/DPA. Electric wasn't a popular secondary outside of end drain builds but it had all these fast attacks so I thought why not pair two sets with high DPA attacks together? At that time Fire and Ice blast were top tier but I favored Fire because it didn't rely on patches as much for AoE, and I felt the combination of Fire/elec offered a better balance of ST damage and AoE damage. Of all the characters I had on live, she is the embodiment of what I loved about this game. I loved the jousting playstyle and there was nothing comparable that can scratch that itch. As my play style matured, and as the homecoming team introduced numerous enhancements to blaster QoL, she's only gotten better, I recommend finding that emotional connection first, then you can min/max any build.

I saw my name mentioned in the opening post. I looked at your build. Some feedback: You have some temporary buffs like build up, tidal forces, vengeance and power boost turned on which skews your stats. See this thread for how to turn them off: The 6th slot in positrons blast is netting you about 9% toxic/psi resist and 15% mez resistance. It's not worth it in my opinion. AoE Knockback/up/down powers are good candidates for force feedback +recharge procs. I'd reslot water burst and maybe geyser to see if you can fit that proc in. This proc provides a lot of value to your global recharge over time. Instead of allocating 3 slots for thunderstrike in dehydrate you could have just rounded out the superior winter's bite set at 5 total slots for 2.5 range defense (I'm assuming you are shooting to shore up your range defense). Instead you only get 1.25 range defense from 3 thunderstrike. Less defense at the cost of more slots = not efficient use of slots. Instead of adding 2 more slots to power thrust for 1.88 range defense with explosive strike, you could have added those 2 slots to total focus and rounded out a full mako's bite set for 3.75 range defense. Again, the latter approach is a more efficient use of slots. You are missing both the Gladiator's armor 3%. and steadfast protection 3% global defense unique IOs. The slotting you have with Aegis in charged armor doesn't align with any common themes/build goals I see. Fire/Cold/AoE defense does very little (for your build) and you are not actively trying to stack bonuses for that type of defense. You also don't need that many points of knockback protection if you are hovering. You don't need the steadfast kb nor the karma kb IOs. Instead of vengeance I'd get evasive maneuvers for more flight mobility. Vengeance is situational, Evasive is something you can use all the time. Here's a quick tweak of your original build, note the range defense value - 45% - which is at softcap, meaning you'll avoid 95% of attacks with a "range" tag. Water energy tweak.mbd There will always be people that think blasters are so fragile that hover blasting and avoiding melee at all costs is the only way to play them safely. But if/when you are ready to level up and learn how to use melee attacks successfully and overcome your fear of melee, I can teach you.

Don't be a party pooper! I'll punt this no fun response with those toy bat temp powers. Freeem! Let's try this again. 3, 2, 1... KB Fight! pew pew pew!

1 - as a melee player you can joust the final blow and avoid the auto-res. 2 - it's been a while since we talked about KB, that's the real culprit that made the OP die. So let's flame each other on KB. 3, 2, 1 go!

I'd double/triple down on recharge and procs. Dead things don't fight back. outside of AV/GMs I find it's the fodder that greatly accelerates your path to debt when you engage a group. 1 or two lone bosses do not demand the kind of mitigation that softcapped builds offer. So the faster you can kill the trash fodder, the more you increase your likelyhood to live through the boss encounter. Click click click click click - Brute (Savage Melee - Radiation Armor).mbd This one rotates godmodes to keep resists respectable. The absorb shield and regen provide backup. You can add melee core/barrier later. It'll be a total clickfest.

I really don't understand this. Fury grants up to 200% damage buff but brute damage cap is 700%, there's a lot more room for damage there and offensive provides not only a damage buff, but a toxic proc and slightly better -res debuff. I'll take what I can get. I've taken your comments and mocked up a build based on my original entry to show the OP what that looks like. You are right, it's not a lot of investment to hit those numbers in defensive mode, but it is A LOT of investment if you try to hit those numbers in offensive. Sav Bio Defensive - Brute (Savage Melee - Bio Armor).mbd My main concern is that this type of build favors factions that don't have diversified damage types. Lethal debuffs from guns/swords debuff all defense and that quickly cascades. So is getting FCEN to softcap really worth it? I see more value in the hard 90% resist cap in defensive mode more than I do the FCEN defense. If there's anything about the "juice not worth the squeeze" point you made about using offensive, for me it would be the drastic dip in the resist value if I switched to that mode. My take on this combo is that if defenses are easily stripped and you are going to be fighting all types of stuff with mixed damage types, it's more worthwhile to focus on things that help you outside of defense. The staples of /bio in that regard are the clicks - Ablative Carapace, DNA Siphon and Parasitic Aura - all of them need recharge, so I built with more emphasis on that. However, that also means more micromanagement of inspirations and adopting a playstyle that's suitable for such build philosophies. To the OP, if you prefer to stand still and trade blows then the above build may a better fit, until you run up against factions that diversify their damage types and debuffs.

Relative to sets that require less overhead to get there and offer defense debuff resist such as stone armor, shield or SR etc..., I stand my ground that Bio and rad are squishier given the defense meta, the former moreso than the latter. Defense debuffs exist and a lot of that comes from lethal gun/sword attacks. It takes a LOT of investment to get both FCEN softcap AND 90% S/L resist on brutes, and even more so when you plan to stay in offensive mode. The juice is not worth the squeeze in my opinion. But you can't look at survival from just from your armor set. Survival is combination of armor set, primary/epic set synergies, player skill and build, the two scrapper builds I posted is a testament to that. Like I said, you can invest in softcap and resists at the expense of damage. But I live the blaster mantra of "dead things don't fight back," and I find that a moderate approach works well when you have your playstyle down and know what you are doing.

Here are some write ups I did on /Bio and /Rad Bio is squishy, rad is less squishy. Survival is the first thing a lot of people look to address and neither has overwhelming synergy with Savage other than a recharge buff with blood stacks which helps your cornerstone survival powers recharge faster. I'm biased towards sets that have knockdowns as mitigation. Both sets need recharge, so the knockdowns server 2 purposes - mitigation and force feedback proc So you will most likely see a few camps to how to approach building such a combo 1 - Try to hit softcap/high defenses and as close to 90% S/L resist as possible. 2 - Build like you build anything and everything from yester-year - recharge recharge recharge and more recharge 3 - Try a moderate blend of 1 and 2 I've done the high defense route with my sav/bio stalker, but it left a lot of damage on the table and since then I'm gravitated more towards approach 3. Recharge is still important for either secondary and I want to make a conscious effort to build for global recharge while balancing getting my S/L/E/N/F/C defenses around 30% ish so that I can pop a luck to get close to softcap. My first crack at Sav/Bio would look something like this: Sav Bio - Brute (Savage Melee - Bio Armor).mbd This is not a combination that you can make an uber tank mage without major sacrifices on damage so I focused on what the build needs outside of softcap defenses and hardcap resists - recharge and slow resistance. I took energy torrent as a force feedback proc trigger + mitigation late game, and addressed blind by picking up focused accuracy. Your defenses are in the 30% range so pop lucks proactively if you know you are going into danger. I would have taken a similar approach with /Rad but doubled down on recharge even more to proc monster ground zero and radiation therapy. Think of both builds as playing blasters with mez protection. Don't stand still too much and expect to trade blows against overwhelming odds and you'll do fine.

I play all ATs except sentinels. Post a topic in the brute forums and I can chime in, in addition to other brute forum regulars.

8 toggles is not crazy for blasters, Energize gives you a discount on endurance consumption and you can see that at the bottom of the view totals pop up. If I recall, your overall endurance recovery is around 2.7 and your endurance consumption from toggles is somewhere around .8. Conventional wisdom is that anywhere around net 2 end per second is good. But energize also discounts the endurance consumption on your click powers. You should be fine especially since you are not taking advantage of all your melee powers. Pro-tip, put energize on auto, don't treat it as an on-demand heal. AV/GM fights amounts to the following: Survival - make sure you don't die and making sure that you can consistently pump out damage instead of constantly tending to your HP bar. Damage - Overwhelming firepower, or -regen debuffs or -resist debuffs to make sure you overcome the target's natural regeneration. EM Pulse would be a hard skip for me, with a 5 min recharge it's just not useful, and there are other tools with more consistency and potency that you can use for AV fights like the envenomed dagger temp power that you can purchase from START vendors.

In the second video I show how to pull +4 trolls set for a team of 8 at level 20. If you want to learn how to play blasters and how to build them. I can teach you.

Fight some Arachnos widows that blind you with their smoke grenade and then I think you will re-evaluate this statement. While not common, blind is pretty darn annoying and tactics is a counter against blind. The other reason to take tactics is that the to-hit buff it provides actually boosts your snipe damage (in combat quick snipe has it's damage buffed by to hit buffs, up to 21%). Tactics will give you 10% base and increase your chances to hit, add the kismet +6% acc unique which actually boosts to-hit, and you are boosting your quick snipe damage by 16%.. Yet another reason to take tactics is that it can help you hit stuff that's way above your level. If you find yourself missing a lot more against +3s and +4s, tactics helps. Here's some additional mids tips and things to pay attention to, I highlighted/circled the important ones in red: 1 View totals button - this is your best friend. You get to see your stats, such as defense, regeneration, recovery, max HP, resists, debuff resistances, mez protection/resistance etc... 2 Enemy relative level at the top - this will impact your chances to hit, most vets settle at +3 or +4. At level 50 with incarnate boost the highest you'll face is +3. I like +4 because I exemp down for lower level content a lot and don't have access to the incarnate level shift most of the time. 3 Accuracy - this is your chance to hit against enemies based on the above setting. Anything over 95% is good as that is the cap, overflow is buffer against to hit debuffs. Make sure you have aim and build up detoggled or else you'll feel like a sharpshooter all the time when your actual chances are much lower. 4 Recharge - this is how long it takes the power to recharge left number is after enhancements/hasten/set bonuses, number in parenthesis is base recharge. I used Em Pulse as an example. the first thing I want to highlight is your comment about it being good for boss fights, bosses pop up every spawn on a team. with a 296 second or almost 5 minute recharge, I doubt that it's going to be super useful. Even Nova recharges in under a minute. These are the details to pay attention to. Here are a few other things I'm going to highlight from my previous comments. You may have skimed over them: You can take this approach to answer your question about the regenerative tissue question. I can tell you I don't bother with any of the heal IOs besides panacea and maybe preventive medicine absorb proc in health It's a lot to figure out on your own. That's why in my previous posts I posted a build for you. Nothing wrong with using that as your baseline and even just copying it and then ask me why I did certain things the way I did. Sometimes it's easier to reverse engineer from an example than to learn from the ground up. Here's the build again: Standard Energyx2 hoverblaster - Blaster (Energy Blast - Energy Manipulation).mbd

See comment above regarding both your builds. You have all the temporary buffs like power boost, aim, build up, even rest toggled, and the force feedback proc in power thrust is also skewing your stats making you think you have perma hasten. Without powerboost, your range defense is at ~38.5%. It's respectable, but not quite at softcap. Without the force feedback proc in power thrust your hasten recharge time goes from 103 seconds to 135. There are powers that don't deserve any IOs if they are left at a single slot. Kick is one of those. You have a overwhelming force KD IO, which is unique, in there which converts knockback into KD. But be honest with yourself, are you EVER going to use kick? Instead of slotting that IO in kick wouldn't it make more sense to replace one of the 5 overwhelming force IOs in explosive blast with that so you don't have to exert another slot for the sudden acceleration -kd IO? The gaussian's build up proc is better in aim, it has a high chance to fire when activated in powers with longer recharge and allows you to punch through enemies with high defense. It's better in tactics if you have lots of pets and team a lot because it'll check for proc for each teammate. I would still put it in aim for the reason I stated above. When I absolutely NEED to take down that paragon protector that activated MOG I don't want to depend on random proc from tactics, I want it on demand with aim. Procs don't work well in powers with low recharge, the force feedback proc in power thrust is better allocated to those AoEs as I mentioned. I've also provided you a template of what my revision would look like, with the screenshot above, as well as a posted mids file in my responses above. The performance shifter +end IO and the Panacea +end +hp IO are the only slots I tossed into Stamina and Health for my build. Those are enough for most of my blasters because all blasters get an endurance recovery power by level 20 that would make regen jealous. I also wouldn't bother with the 2 slots of freebird in evasive manuevers, you'll move plenty fast with that turned on and there's no need to enhance or build for movement speed if you run evasive. Those 2 slots of freebird gives you 8% regen but look at what that actually gets you with real numbers: with those 2 slots Without that 8% regen bonus: How badly do you need that 8% regen?

Enabling that option allows you to see your real in combat stats, not inflated stats due to you being out of combat and invisible/evasive. So that's why I didn't un-toggle evasive. Keeping it on also helps you see your end consumption, because chances are that's a toggle you'll always have on. No, your game plan is to hover blast, range defense covers most of the ranged attacks, any attacks that do get through has damage reduced via your resist shields. Smashing/Lethal and energy attacks are the most common damage types late game. You give up a LOT of survival for a hover blaster build switching to Scorpion Shield, the S/L/energy defense portion of the shield is redundant if you have high range defense and the game plan is to keep at range. And you'll be giving up a significant amount of S/L/E resistance for a paltry amount of toxic resist, which is a pretty rare damage type. Where you'd see more adoption for scorpion shield is on blasters that are willing to dance in melee range and use their melee attacks. When you are ready to move to that phase of your blaster maturity we can discuss those types of builds.

Nice, it's awesome to see returning players. I know I got emotional when I fired up CoH for the first time after I discovered homecoming and I know a lot of other people had the feels too. One note about the -kb IO in single target blasts. Conventional wisdom is that it's not necessary. Especially if you are blasting top down which turns those ST attacks into ghetto knockdowns. If you look around you'll see that in most builds only AoEs get the -kb IO treatment because they can still impact AoEs coming from the rest of the team. AoEs is where I'd also look to slot the Force Feedback proc. Those have a lower chance to proc in AoEs but they check for proc per target. Because of that IO you don't necessarily need to shoot for a hard perma hasten recharge time, you can let that IO proc cover some of the ground needed to get there.

Good morning. Part 2 of my feedback, this time with breakdown. I don't know how long either of you have been playing the game but based on my observations on recharge bonus stacking, it seems that you have some understanding of conventional wisdom about builds (recharge recharge recharge!) and playstyle perpetuated a decade ago. This is also evidenced by your pick of phase shift. Nothing about your builds scream PvP, so I made the assumption that phase shift is taken as a safety button, much like personal force field, surge of power, hibernate, etc... to get you out of trouble. Fast forward to today, you have a LOT more options in the way you can handle survival, and you have a lot more options/easier access to hard to get enhancements from yesteryear. Recharge is still important, but there are new breeds of builds that challenge that mantra and take builds to new heights. The current meta is survival, you'll see a lot of talk on the forums about softcap defense and hardcap resists especially in the melee AT sections. Of the two, softcap defense is more "bang for the buck" for most non-armored ATs, because at 45% defense against specific vectors, standard enemies will only have a 5% chance to hit you using attacks that use that specific vector, For example: 45% range defense = mobs will miss 95% of the time with ranged attacks, regardless of whether these attacks are smashing/lethal/energy/neg energy/cold/fire/psi/toxic 45% Smashing/Lethal defense = mobs will miss 95% of the time with attacks that a primarily Smashing/Lethal in damage type, regardless of whether they are melee, range, or AoE attacks. If you are hover blasting, range defense makes more sense since it covers all attack damage types. A lot of builds by vet builders today don't even bother with stuff like phase shift/personal force field/surge of power. They don't need it. Once you get to that level of defense the pre-50 content becomes pretty easy. Post 50 hardmode content is a bit different, as those will greatly depend on team buffs, so for blasters, many choose to embrace the damage and not build as much towards survival. If you want a build that's good for 90-95% of the content available, a standard range defense softcap hover blaster build will do. It's easier to start off with a cookie cutter template which means you will need the following power pools: Flight = for hover and fly, etc Fighting = for tough and weave Speed = for hasten Leadership = for Maneuvers, maybe tactics and even vengeance for the luck of the gambler 7.5 mule. Weave and Maneuvers give the most defense out of all the possible pool powers, and it will be very hard for you to get to softcap defense without those two, so you are locked into those 4 pool picks. My first pass at a standard "no expense spared" ranged hover blaster energy/energy build would look something like this: Standard Energyx2 hoverblaster - Blaster (Energy Blast - Energy Manipulation).mbd I circled the temporary buffs and where you need to click to turn them off. Also note the 45% range defense which is our goal. You can access that window by hitting the "view totals" button, also circled. If you want to learn how to build like this, then I recommend giving the link in my previous comment a read.

Don't, You both need a bit of guidance on mids mechanics and build design. 1 - Hasten is not perma because you have a force feedback proc triggered in power thrust which skews your recharge numbers. De-select the yellow dial on power thrust and you'll see hasten recharge go up to 160 seconds. 2 - two redistributed slots in defense powers isn't going to matter. It's how you stack set bonuses that will greatly augment survival, not one defense enhancement here and there. 3 - when you pick up powers matters. Snipe is taken at level 32 which means you don't have access to it if you exemp down for lower level content. It's available at 12, you don't need grant invis at 12, and if you are just chasing set bonuses with grant invis as a LOTG mule you can easily put that off as a level 49 pick. Same comment with hasten, if that's a key part of your build and you are so keen to get it perma, I would imagine that you'd want that a lot sooner than level 47 4 - the energy manipulator stun proc is pointless in stamina. 5 - you have the +resist defense uniques but I don't see any +3% defense resist uniques. Those are way more valuable than the +resist ones but it's worth having them all 6 - your stats are greatly inflated because you turned on all the incarnate powers + power boost + surge of power. Those are not on 100%, Turn all those off you see what your real stats are, just like force feedback proc skewing you recharge stats. What you are shooting for is a standard hover blaster build since you skipped all your melee attacks. If you want something that can hold its own then the build goals you want to shoot for is ranged softcap backed up by a resist shield. You have the latter, you just need to focus your set bonuses for the former. It's late and I don't have the bandwidth tonight to give you a mids build lesson, but if you are interested in some reading that highlights how to focus your build. Try the following link

Assault Rifle would be my pick as well. You can still do a Rambo AR/TA/Arsenal (LRM) build without full auto, and it'll still be on theme.

You skipped all the melee attacks, that tells me where your mindset and comfort level is at. That's a good set of starting clues. 45% range defense + epic resist shield is the cookie cutter route for range survival, most people also hover blast if they go down that route. 45% range defense is the softcap for normal content, meaning mobs will only have a 5% chance to hit you without buffs with range attacks. Add a resist shield on top of that means attacks that do get through will hit you for less. Then you layer the controls/other tools you have from your toolkit (including killing stuff fast) to further limit incoming damage. That's called layered mitigation. Don't skip cosmic burst. It's your hardest single target hitter with a guaranteed stun. Slot attacks as attacks first and foremost and not for debuff/secondary effects, looking at neutrino bolt. Typically you can skip either the Tier1 or Tier2 primary pick if you have enough recharge, I'd skip neutrino and sub in cosmic burst. Wild fortress and for that matter any other blaster sustain should be taken the moment they are available so you can mitigate/eliminate any endurance issues. IO sets for your build that's good for range defense: Thunderstrike (3 pieces or full set) Artillery (3 pieces or full set) Blessing of zephyr (2 pieces) Both blaster ATOs (full set each) Basilisk's gaze (2 pieces but you should get 4 for the 7.5% recharge bonus too) Preemptive optimization (full set) I'm going to make the claim that the only reason you went force mastery is because of personal force field so you can turtle up. Temp invuln is just a nice little bonus. Once you get comfortable with playing blasters or if you have a build that hit range defense softcap, you can open up your selection of epics. Soul master and Fire mastery both offer attractive powers that help with your ranged game plan via soul tentacles and bonfire, in addition to providing a resist shield with S/L and other element resists. Finally, learning to play blasters is not an easy journey. There are a lot of things you take for granted playing lol melee that will serve you a hard reality check when you play blasters. A build can only take you so far. Success in playing blasters is a combination of: Understanding inspiration usage Understanding conditions that allows you to go all out vs when you should hold back Understanding your toolkit and how to use them for survival if you have such tools Understanding mob targeting priorities Understanding positioning (where you should and should not be standing) Understanding and leveraging game mechanics such as line of sight, mob fear mechanic, movement, etc... Having said that, a good build can help mask a lot of those nuances and carry you through a lot of content.

What you are looking for is a hover blaster with a resist epic shield and 45% range defense. This is a pretty typical hover blaster ask/goal for those that haven't embraced the finer nuances of blasterhood and/or developed expertise in playing blasters that can function in and out of melee range.... But that's OKAY because hover pure range blasters are still very functional. Although you CAN skip all your melee powers, they do provide a place to slot full sets of mako's bite for 3.75% range defense, my recommendation is to keep at least 1 for that bonus and as a "you'll regret getting in my face" power. Besides Mako's bite, other sets that provide range defense bonus that's pertinent to your combo include Thunderstrike (full set), blessing of the zephyr (2 pieces), eradication (3 pieces), preemptive optimization (full set) . I wouldn't worry too much about kb on single target powers. But do put a KD proc in your AoEs. Artillery is a great set but it has greatly diminished value for energy blast because you will not be slotting the full set due to the KD proc tax. For Epics Dark Mastery and Fire Mastery are both attractive for hover blasters. Bonfire is still pretty strong even after the adjustment to KD rate. Dark Mastery gives you fearsome stare AND possess, the latter can be slotted with a full set of Coercive Persuasion for 10% global recharge and +5% range defense. It is the best bang for the buck if you have the funds to get that purple set. Powers that you can absolutely skip from Atomic manipulation as a pure ranged hover blaster include atom smasher and beta decay, with positronic fist a distant third (although you might consider it for the Mako's set as a mule and never use it). Beta decay is a trap power since it requires mobs within melee range for the bonus. Fighting pool for tough/weave is the norm for defensive blaster builds, you may want to also consider leadership for Maneuvers for the extra defense as well. The last pool depends on your preference, most go speed for hasten, but I can see the case for something like stealth or combat jumping for more defense and you can somewhat make up for recharge by slotting force feedback procs in your AoEs along with the KD IOs. Since you have to pay the KB tax those defensive picks might just be what you need to hit softcap.

I think I might the only person that isn't on board the gloom/st from epic train and instead chose to embrace arctic breath for a super proc tank. Most Rad/SS proc builds I see still gives up proc slotting for enhancements that boost acc/dam/end. As far as I know @Spaghetti Betty is the only other poster that has linked builds where attacks are 6 slotted with just procs. I remember a post a while back where someone asked what's the build with powers that can hold the most procs and most responses were /temporal defenders or some such. No, Rad/SS is the poster child for extreme proc builds. It's very effective and it's a breath of fresh air compared to the conventional "You should shoot for 45% defense and/or resists cap" mentality that dominates the Tanker forums.

Someone on Excelsior asked me in game about Dark Dark. Here are the criteria he listed: Solo Friendly Exemp Friendly Budget build < 500mil Flight pool, fight pool, speed pool The build needs to elicit feelings of "Wow I pulled that off" It's a tall ask. Dark/Dark works better at range. It's not one of the more damaging combos which makes it more tedious to solo with. Temper your expectations, you are not going to be plowing through x8 mobs with this combo at lower levels. The ST immob is taken here to aid with soloing. The low level playstyle is going to be very single target focused. This is a cheapish build with only a few expensive pieces. The goal is softcap range defense and then as much recharge as I can cram. I also built up some respectable psi defense along the way. The upgrade would look drastically different than this cheap build, it would include a lot more slow resist. If it were up to me I'd ditch the entire flight pool and grab combat jumping instead for guaranteed immob protection. If I need to fly, there's temp flight packs for that. I'd also make sure I'm at 95% chance to hit against +4s, With the higher values that purples and ATOs provide there's a reasonable chance that the build can also hit perma-hasten and AoE softcap as well. Budget Friendly D/D/D - Hero Controller Build plan made with Mids' Reborn v3.6.6 rev. 3 ────────────────────────────── Primary powerset: Darkness Control Secondary powerset: Darkness Affinity Pool powerset (#1): Flight Pool powerset (#2): Speed Pool powerset (#3): Fighting Pool powerset (#4): Leadership Epic powerset: Dark Mastery ────────────────────────────── Powers taken: Level 1: Dark Grasp A: Basilisk's Gaze: Accuracy/Hold 3: Basilisk's Gaze: Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge/Hold 3: Thunderstrike: Accuracy/Damage/Endurance 5: Neuronic Shutdown: Chance of Damage(Psionic) 27: Ghost Widow's Embrace: Chance of Damage(Psionic) 45: Cloud Senses: Chance for Negative Energy Damage Level 1: Twilight Grasp A: Touch of the Nictus: Healing/Absorb 5: Touch of the Nictus: Accuracy/Healing/Absorb 33: Touch of the Nictus: Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge 34: Preventive Medicine: Heal/RechargeTime 48: Preventive Medicine: Chance for +Absorb Level 2: Shadowy Binds A: Invention: Accuracy Level 4: Fly A: Blessing of the Zephyr: Knockback Reduction (4 points) 43: Winter's Gift: Slow Resistance (20%) Level 6: Possess A: Malaise's Illusions: Accuracy/Recharge 7: Malaise's Illusions: Endurance/Confused 7: Malaise's Illusions: Accuracy/Endurance 9: Malaise's Illusions: Confused/Range 9: Malaise's Illusions: Accuracy/Confused/Recharge Level 8: Fearsome Stare A: Glimpse of the Abyss: Accuracy/Recharge 11: Glimpse of the Abyss: Endurance/Fear 13: Glimpse of the Abyss: Accuracy/Endurance 13: Glimpse of the Abyss: Fear/Range 15: Glimpse of the Abyss: Accuracy/Fear/Recharge Level 10: Hover A: Luck of the Gambler: Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed 11: Shield Wall: +Res (Teleportation), +5% Res (All) 29: Kismet: Accuracy +6% Level 12: Tar Patch A: Invention: Recharge Reduction Level 14: Hasten A: Invention: Recharge Reduction 47: Invention: Recharge Reduction Level 16: Shadow Fall A: Luck of the Gambler: Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed 17: Luck of the Gambler: Defense/Endurance 17: Luck of the Gambler: Defense 19: Impervium Armor: Resistance/Endurance 39: Impervium Armor: Resistance/Endurance/Recharge 39: Impervium Armor: Resistance Level 18: Haunt A: Expedient Reinforcement: Accuracy/Recharge 42: Expedient Reinforcement: Accuracy/Damage 48: Expedient Reinforcement: Accuracy/Damage/Recharge 49: Expedient Reinforcement: Damage/Endurance Level 20: Fade A: Luck of the Gambler: Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed 21: Luck of the Gambler: Defense/Recharge 21: Luck of the Gambler: Defense/Endurance/Recharge 23: Impervium Armor: Endurance/Recharge 23: Impervium Armor: Resistance/Recharge 29: Impervium Armor: Resistance/Endurance/Recharge Level 22: Kick (Empty) Level 24: Soul Absorption A: Preemptive Optimization: Accuracy/Recharge 25: Preemptive Optimization: EndMod/Endurance 25: Preemptive Optimization: EndMod/Recharge 27: Preemptive Optimization: EndMod/Accuracy/Endurance 36: Preemptive Optimization: EndMod/Accuracy/Recharge 42: Preemptive Optimization: EndMod/Endurance/Recharge Level 26: Umbra Beast A: Expedient Reinforcement: Accuracy/Recharge 33: Expedient Reinforcement: Accuracy/Damage 33: Expedient Reinforcement: Accuracy/Damage/Recharge 34: Expedient Reinforcement: Endurance/Damage/Recharge 43: Expedient Reinforcement: Damage/Endurance 43: Expedient Reinforcement: Resist Bonus Aura for Pets Level 28: Tough A: Gladiator's Armor: TP Protection +3% Def (All) 40: Impervium Armor: Resistance/Endurance 40: Impervium Armor: Resistance/Endurance/Recharge 40: Impervium Armor: Resistance Level 30: Weave A: Luck of the Gambler: Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed 31: Reactive Defenses: Defense 31: Reactive Defenses: Defense/Endurance 31: Reactive Defenses: Scaling Resist Damage Level 32: Dark Servant A: Cloud Senses: Accuracy/ToHitDebuff 34: Cloud Senses: Accuracy/Recharge 36: Cloud Senses: Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge 36: Cloud Senses: ToHit Debuff/Endurance/Recharge Level 35: Murky Cloud A: Steadfast Protection: Resistance/+Def 3% 37: Impervium Armor: Resistance/Endurance 37: Impervium Armor: Resistance 37: Unbreakable Guard: +Max HP 39: Impervium Armor: Psionic Resistance Level 38: Darkest Night A: Invention: Endurance Reduction Level 41: Howling Twilight A: Invention: Recharge Reduction Level 44: Umbral Torrent A: Artillery: Accuracy/Damage 45: Artillery: Damage/Endurance 46: Artillery: Accuracy/Damage/Recharge 46: Sudden Acceleration: Knockback to Knockdown 47: Force Feedback: Chance for +Recharge Level 47: Shadow Field A: Basilisk's Gaze: Accuracy/Hold 49: Basilisk's Gaze: Accuracy/Recharge 50: Basilisk's Gaze: Recharge/Hold 50: Basilisk's Gaze: Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge/Hold Level 49: Evasive Maneuvers A: Luck of the Gambler: Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed ────────────────────────────── Inherents: Level 1: Brawl (Empty) Level 1: Containment Level 1: Sprint A: Unbounded Leap: +Stealth Level 2: Rest (Empty) Level 1: Swift A: Invention: Flight Speed Level 1: Health A: Panacea: +Hit Points/Endurance 15: Numina's Convalesence: +Regeneration/+Recovery 45: Miracle: +Recovery Level 1: Hurdle A: Invention: Jumping Level 1: Stamina A: Performance Shifter: Chance for +End 48: Performance Shifter: EndMod Level 4: Afterburner

46-80-74 Robotics/Storm Summoning MM - yay!