Frostweaver

brutes are not force multipliers. They are the target for force multiplication. and at proliferation made most AT's obsolete in the long run.

Prior to endgame, I'd take Rad over almost anything else (except Kin midgame) Post endgame though, Traps does everything rad does except heals, and requires vastly less micromanagement. Nature does most of it and has better heals, and Thermal is better for teams to take out an av/gm. But for the long haul, from level 1 to endgame and beyond, rad is still very very decent. It offers more endgame then bubbles, ice, or dark, and on the whole is a good, solid middle-of-the-road choice across a broad cross-section of content.

I disagree about sonic as a GM/AV killer. It takes more than one cycle of your attack chain to drop one, and while it may not have the Raw DPS of fire, the second cycle, by default, is generally working off of -50% or more resist. When you proc it up, though, that second cycle comes a LOT faster (like +100 recharge faster) and con potentially offer -hardcap resist, WITHOUT trying to stack the same -resist from the same power twice. Fire gets, at most, -15% resist It will generally take dozens of cycles on a GM and at least 4 cycles on an AV... and every cycle AFTER the first, you are offering dramatically more damage than fire. (Not to mention if you DO have teammates, They REALLY love your -resist!) And yes, fire gets quick snipe (and potentially -15% resist), and can really leverage it with the right secondary, which sonic doesn't get, but I still think that -res beats +20% dps over the LONG run.

How about instead of talky talky about sets, I SHOW you?

why, is there actual interest in 'cold' farms, electric farms, dark farms, and psi farms?

well... if you want to get really texhnical, ill/traps is the most pets a controller can have... hehehehehe

Meh, I am not married to any secondary. I love Ice, but that's because I intimately understand it's Chilling Embrace clone, and I am very used to using it from my experience with ice armor melees... And I think that the fast-refreshing absorb mechanic is the best thing to happen to Blasters since they added a recovery ability to every set. I only have one, single, water/ice blaster though... compared to 2 Tactical arrows, a dp/time, a rad/mental, and a sonic/plant giant killer. and yes, I literally have the first 3 pages of excelsior filled with fully tricked out level 50's. I work nights as a streamer, so I have like 6 hours a day to kill. I like pretty much all of them (except devices, but that's a whole 'nother conversation, and I haven't used it since they added field op) but I don't like to see options closed off because one person is convinced that the set that they started with and played the most with is the 'best'. There are very few bests in this game, and none among blasters. Most blasters are, survival and damage wise, pretty standardised... even outliers like fire tend to equalize once people get fully IO'd and start to bang their incarnates into shape... -res procs and the like. the 'best' farmer is a rad/fire brute (although spines is a VERY VERY close second). The 'best' GM killer is an Ill/rad or ill/traps controller, the 'best' at surviving most content is a stone tanker, the 'best' at holding aggro is an ice tanker. Outside of that, there are simply not a lot of bests. There are lots of worsts, though.

You can use a butter knife to pound nails, but a hammer is simply better for the job. And I am not 'bashing' mental in the slightest. I am simply letting the OP know that there are options that are just as good. and Flooring a GM's regen is not actually that hard. With a few exceptions (Lusca and, I believe, that one in DA) more than -200% is wasted... and in many cases, -heal is just as important (at least for the DE tree monsters). And a LOT of AV's have self heal, most specifically, Romulus is a bear if you don't dump a bit of -heal on him. I have soloed a LOT of GM's. For stupid reasons usually, but mostly to see if I could. This was the statement I was refuting. I understand you love mental. Hey, I love ice armor, but I understand that it's not the best in all circumstances. It was a hard lesson to learn. But the statement that 'this precludes all but mental" was pure Fanboi bullsh**. To be completely honest, if I was making a pure blaster GM/AV Killer, I'd probably use plant instead... better personal defenses against a single target, and absorb is perfect for dealing with dps 'leakage' from a GM or av that busts your incarnates. Although, to be fair, I am a little pissed off that they specifically crippled it's ability to slot -defense sets. I guess it would have threatened Brute supremacy or something if it could slot achilles heel.

You can use a butter knife to pound nails, but a hammer is simply better for the job.

The only problem with time is that there is SO much going on that, to use it effectively, you kinda have to ignore your primary. It's a very...intense, set.

I am really, really enjoying Electric/Traps. It's kinda brutal and LOTS of control, damage, debuffs, buffs, and the other goodies trollers love. Just remember it's a defense set and not a heal set and you are golden.

Apparently you don't know that /temporal and /plant have the same regen debuff?

'artificial efficiency'? I am not talking about exclusively Farming. To be honest, I really don't care about the fact that Brutes trivialize it. I use it too, like everyone else. Have you actually PLAYED on a brute steamroll team? That is not artificial efficiency in the least. scrappers, Blasters. MM's, Dominators, stalkers, VEAT's, controllers, tankers, a well-built brute can do every single one of those jobs better than the specialists. Brutes have always been disgustingly OP, but when CoH and CoV were separated, that was perfectly fine. Corrupters, Veat's, and MM's basically played buff/debuffs, which could 'assist' brutes, stalkers soloed, and nobody gave a crap about dominators except dominators. The only Other AT's that had to compete with Brutes were other Brutes. But AT Proliferation? That was just a bad idea. All of a sudden people could meaningfully compare other AT's with Brutes, and they realized EVERYTHING else was utterly superfluous... all you needed to steamroll every bit of content in the game was a brute, and a few buffs and debuffs. Sure, there were a few other brutal combinations, but those had to be specially designed... Out-of-the-box, virtually ANY Brute can be banged into shape to trivialize 4/8 content... literally the toughest stuff in the game, SOLO. If they scaled the difficulty higher, changed the aggro caps to 32, and even boosted it up to +6 content, within a week there would be brutes more than capable of solo steamrolling +6/16 content... and not just farms. If they had a 'setting' where every single mob in an incarnate spawn was a boss or an EB, Brutes would be right there, untouchable, smashing through them like toilet paper. If their build wasn't the best, they might need a buffer/debuffer along for the ride. Brutes are the star players. They are like Teen wolf... making all the baskets, singlehandedly humiliating the other team, while the rest of his teammates sit around getting bored and occasionally feeding him the basketball. I am not saying that Brutes need a nerf. I hate Nerfherding... But I am saying that there needs to be some way, some method where other AT's can shine and become the star player occasionally. Maybe that means relaxing aggro and aoe caps on Tankers. Maybe that means cranking Blaster target and Damage caps. Maybe that means making 'post incarnate' difficulties settings where all enemies have longbow sonic grenades, 95% to-hit chances and no cc protection. That might even mean nerfing Brute's punchvoke. I really don't know... But I do know that I get burnout occasionally, and 'city of brutes' doesn't help that much.

taking the melee/resistance Hybrid.

I do too. and then coming out of it and smashing the stalker. I think that tactic was the reason they were given a massive aoe defense boost. And to be honest, that nerf to anyone trying to protect themselves from stalkers with an aura pissed me off to quit the game for 6 months. It was a staggering kick in the pants from the dev team.

you ain't seen a Blaster Blush until you see what a dp/kin corr can pull off.

Just more evidence that burn needs it's damage cut by 2/3rds. or alternatively, turn the fear back on for brutes. I love my brute farmer, but even I will admit that it's STUPID that she can out-aoe blasters with a tanker's survivability.

No, /mental is not the be all and end all for solo blastering. It doesn't offer any defense or resist BUT big regen that ONLY helps when you are surrounded by mobs... which, against a GM or even an AV, you won't be. Oh, and a low-mag confuse which you really don't need because of said regen. Mental is absolutely top notch as a farmer, especially since it has insane recovery, but strictly middle of the road for soloing anything but minions and luts. It has some -rech, but doesn't add much in the way of damage compared to other sets. it's -regen is shared by /time, and /plant. The reality is, Blasters just aren't very good GM killers. We can do it, sure, but many scrappers, most brutes, a few controllers, quite a few stalkers, most soldiers, and the occasional odd duck defender or corrupter can just do a MUCH better job of it. What Blasters have always done best is cleaning up spawn after spawn... and until brutes came along and basically did everything better than everyone else, Blasters were the absolute best at it.

Generally any and all attacks that do not get 6 slotted with either ATO's or winter sets. Usually the 6th slot can be used for proc debuff goodness of some sort. The best ones have -defense, kb/kd, or, if you have a snipe in the set, having others with -to-hit helps for the siphon insight proc to make your fast snipe do more damage. PBAOE's can slot fury of the gladiator -res, targetted aoe's can slot annihalation, your fastest ST attack takes decimation chance for BU. Most blaster sets except electric, fire, and sonic offer some very sweet proc options, and fire and sonic make up for it by just having so much badass in their own set that you don't NEED the proc options that much.

agreed. Electric needs to be better at killing, not playing a 3rd rate controller.

Sonic is good with a large number of secondaries, but excels with strong blapper builds. Mostly cause it's -res gives the blappers enormous damage potential. My sonic/time is kinda sick with the -regen from time and -res from sonic. Dreadful wail followed by end of time: brutal.

What are you talking about? 'pricing out'?

bah, I just soloed Eochai in PI with Water/cold. Like 25 minutes ago. And I have soloed Jack, Babbage, two of the monster island DE's (stone and mushroom) and that gigantic robot that spawns in Crimson's chain. admittedly, I have a fairly decent build... no real incarnates (T2 alpha, that's it) but well built. You don't need psi to beat a GM, but you DO need a lot of patience and a fairly decent build (It helped that he couldn't touch me). controllers do it WAY better.

I am still working on optimizing, but I think I might be able to get savage into the same ranks as spines and rad. Maybe even a little faster than their 'default' farming builds. It is taking a ton of tweaking, though, and the current version is still only halfway between claws and spines, but there is still a ton more tweaking to do. The real kicker is that the standard power pools and incarnates might not be the way to go... and shred, which is the only place to slot achilles -res, but it also consumes blood frenzy inefficiently. It doesn't help that mids cannot calculate blood fenzy Damage boost. But the fury from savage leaping into each spawn

Yes, go over to the guides and adds section of the forums, and download the 'sounds add-on' to change the Beam rifle sound effects from their horribly loud musical electric fart sound to something more pew-pew and tolerable. Temporal has a lot to offer BR, but range synergy is not one of those things. temporal is amazing at melee ranges, and is top-tier blapper along with cold, MA, and darkness, while BR/ is almost pure long-range. Best secondaries for BR (IMO) are /TA, /nrg, devices, ninja, and Plant, because they still work reliably at cone range.