StompyOne

Ha! Now that would make Adamastor exciting again! 😂

This has been hinted at and referenced a couple of times in this thread. But take the 41, park it in Echo: Dark Astoria (the portal behind Ouro). Play your regular toon. Wait for an Adamastor announcement in LFG. Swap toons to the 41 for 10-15 minutes. Tops. Get in on the monster kill. Get drops. Make oodles of inf from selling the drops. Repeat once every day. Do that once and you've self funded a toon to 50. Buy IOs in the 20-30 range and don't touch them until you're ready for endgame slotting. Do it once every day, and watch money pile up.

Yeah, the part that I'm trying to figure out is that it all just feels very non-blaster-ish. Like the only way for them to be useful is to adapt your gameplay around them - at which point, you should probably play a pet class. I guess I was wondering if there was a better way to incorporate them in to Blaster Life. Gun Drone (which is a T9, and shouldn't suck) being the useful exception. They don't path well, and the effects seem really sub-par for the investment. Obviously, the gimmicky Fold Space idea is also impractical and wasteful build-wise. Even on that same build, I just started stealthing in and dropping mines/AoEs. The pets rolled up eventually and scuffed the paint on some targets while I killed them. @Forager the spiders were fun to watch, but I wasn't impressed - at least not against anything you really want them for. You have to slot the heck out of them for accuracy just to make sure they hit and even at +100% accy/damage they were anemic. Aside from being a level below you, they don't get the level shift for Incarnates. So fighting L54 content, they're basically trying to fight +5s to their level - which never ends well for a sad little minion. I didn't try the Summon Adept from Mu Mastery, but I suspect it might be an improvement against the harder targets, but probably less useful for random world content (Anniv Event, Rikti Invasions, etc) than the spiders. Overall, the AT combo is still powerful and fun. But for all the standard reasons, not the pets. 🙂 I'm sure it will be leaner and meaner and even more fun once I re-allocate the 25%-ish of my build that went into the effort.

They seem to fall oddly into the blaster sets. A lot of effort and focus to keep up/keep track of/keep summoned, along with quite a few slots and underwhelming results for all of that. Gun Drone being the exception. As an experiment I made an elect/devices/mace blaster. Took the volt sentinel, gun drone, and the spiderlings. The idea being to drop a couple Trip Mines, Fold Space onto the mines and let the pets take care of stragglers. It's a LOT of slots, and setup and I just wasn't impressed with the results. I ended up mostly just killing the stragglers myself. Likewise, I took them street sweeping and into a few +1/x5 missions. They ended up scattered and (again except for gun drone) mostly useless. They seem like they could be a lot of fun thematically. I'm not trying to make a pseudo-MM. I don't want that. But I am trying to justify taking them as powers and slotting them up on a Blaster. I feel like I would have been better served to grab an extra AoE and forget the rest of it. Am I missing the "correct" way to use them, or are they just underwhelming compared to the traditional Blaster powers?

Perhaps I could have phrased it differently, but I'm aware it's "for damage procs." I get that it's not a total reduction in damage, but it is a big deal for proc damage in AoEs.

Thank you! So another 20-21ish percent reduction across the board (be it 1 target or 16) for damage procs. There's even more math for the -Res procs because of that change. That's a very serious kick in the short pants for Tankers. Ok, definitely not a fan...

Can someone help me with the Proc math? I get this part: Where 16 targets at 100% damage (1600%) is being reduced after the first 10 to a total of 1247% damage. A straight reduction of 22%-ish damage against the max of 16 targets. Proc damage apparently will likewise be reduced. I'm with it so far. I don't think I'm a fan, but I feel like I understand. Where I'm in over my math-brain's head is how often procs trigger because of the increase in AoE size. I tried understanding from Bopper's old thread, but the more I dug into the thread the more confused I got. Using an example like Blazing Aura with an 8' radius, that will go by 50% up to 12', how will that affect the number of proc triggers in that power? It feels like this will hurt procs against even low numbers of targets. Dumbing it down for me, can someone explain how many times a 3.5ppm proc currently triggers, vs how many times it will trigger after the changes? Thanks.

I really appreciate the feedback! I've been trying a few different things in true alt-madness fashion. I wanted to get a feel for some different things, so I threw these into a farm with one of my tanks. I ran them up to the L30ish range to get the bulk of their core abilities, and tossed in a bunch of SOs and simple IOs I had laying around or acquired for the experiment. Clearly not end-game slots, but plenty good enough too get a sense for how the powers work. Then I started running each of them through whatever was handy. Random TFs (solo and groups), missions, PUGs, badging, street sweeping, etc. Ice/Fire (probably going Fire epic) was my most WOW factor for damage and general destruction, also the most deaths. I just haven't beat the learning curve yet - or maybe I'm not ready for this much awesome. Either way, I'll be back to this thing soon I'm sure. I really want to see what it can do when it's slotted up correctly. Then, strictly on a lark, I thought "Hey, I'm an idiot outsider. What seems the most overtly Blaster-ey combo?" so I rolled an Energy/Energy blaster. And above all I have to say "LOL" It is absurdity for the sake of absurdity, to the point of seriously getting in it's own way damage-wise. And I know I would want to murder someone if they brought this thing to a PUG of mine. So, while it's not really my thing, it was hilarious fun nonetheless. Probably shelved indefinitely, or until I need a good case of the giggles. Next was AR/Devices. I loved /Devices! So awesome! But I just couldn't seem to get into the AR. On paper it looks fantastic, and I could see glimpses of the greatness while playing, but it just wouldn't come together for me. I will come back to it later, but it's on hold for now. However, it led to... DP/Devices. I've played DP on sentinel a few times and it was painfully meh. But on a blaster it's everything I wanted out of it on the sent. And paired with my new favorite of the week, Devices, it really shines in a way Sent can't touch. All said, I think I'm going to work on the DP/Dev for right now - it's nearly 50 already. And once my bank account recovers from slotting it up (I'm looking at right on 800m to slot and boost it properly) I'm probably going back to the Ice/Fire/Fire. Though I'm really curious about /Temporal, and I may get sidetracked by yet another alt before get back to the first one. 🙂

I'm seeking suggestions from the Blaster vets out there. I admit it, I used to have a bias against Blasters on Live. I could never get them where I wanted with regards to soloing. I know things are different now, but when I came Home I still avoided them. I've been playing a lot of melee, along with Sentinels and Corruptors and the like. And while they're durable, I go numb sometimes with all the setup, and slow grind of gumming their food to death. Sometimes I just like to kill things to death and move on to the next customers in line! It's time to play the AT that put the DAM! in damage. However, I know myself well enough that I know I will screw up a glass cannon. I've gotten too comfy with my tanks, sents and CC toons. I will absolutely murder myself trying to play something too far out on the edge. So it needs to be somewhat tanky/forgiving while I get used to the AT. I do mostly soloing because of frequent RL disruptions, so it needs to be self contained. I like to do TFs when time permits, so it needs to Exemplar well. Conceptually, I'm tentatively leaning magical, ice primary, hover blasting. Beyond that, I'm open to anything that works well. If it matters, money and accolade grinding is not a particular concern. Suggestions? Thanks in advance!

Sincere thanks to everyone who had ideas, explanations and suggestions! The return went really well! I had already decided on using Fire primary, and I went ahead with Black_Assassin's SR suggestion. I made it to L8 tonight before packing it in. I picked up some free prestige powers to round out the attack cycle for now. The overall experience was both overwhelming and yet very familiar, and it was still a lot of fun 😁. I lucked up and found Monty Haul doing his gameshow routine in front of city hall, and won 60m influence on a coin flip. It was a pretty awesome Welcome Home kind of prize. So now I can buy enhancements to keep my powers going without micromanaging funds. I chose not to flag for Help, and flew under the radar (aside from my bonkers jackpot prize) while I wandered and re-aquainted myself. But everyone was really friendly and low drama, with only one or two epeen types. Very much like the best of the good 'ol days, actually. LOL Thanks again all - I'll see you in game!

I think you've got me figured out on multiple points. I don't remember enough about the IO Sets to do anything but screw it up for now. And I will definitely look at the more braindead armor sets. Much appreciated!

Thanks JJDraken! I'll check it out ASAP. For reasons I can't quite figure out, Mids is hanging on install. I'm on .NET 9, but it's aborting install saying it can't install on systems with less than NET 6. That's my problem to sort out, but until then I don't suppose I could trouble you for a screenshot? Edit: Got it. It wanted 6.0 as well as my current V9.03 installed. <shrug> Looks cool, thanks!!

Hey there! Another geriatric, looking looking to recapture some of the glory days I found in CoX. I quit playing before the end, so I missed a good bit of the twilight years content. I played heavily from CoH beta, until I stopped some time after CoH and CoV became basically interchangeable. I played a LOT of melee back then and am looking for a change while I get back up to speed on the game and what's new. I'm looking for something mostly or completely ranged, not a total glass cannon (ala OG Blasters), and doesn't require heavy micromanagement skills. I'm way more casual than I was 15ish years ago. 😉 FotM doesn't bother me, and potato builds are fine, so long as they work. It's all fresh and new to me anyway and I'm just looking for something effective to be the vehicle for me to get back up to speed. I'll be almost exclusively solo, since I've got 5 kids now and I spend more time idling from interruptions than playing! LOL Thanks a ton in advance for any suggestions. It's good to be back!