"Smoke" Blaster Concept Viability

[Winter]

I have been kicking around a concept in my head of a smoke blaster.  It would be a Dark/Ninja blaster, and the idea is that his powers obscure the enemies vision.  I would be keeping a ranged exclusive character and foregoing the melee attacks of /Ninja.  I also see this as a "franken-slotted" character, foregoing sets in favor of slotting for -ToHit in order to fulfill the concept.

 

I do not intend for this character to be uber-powerful even by level 50 standards.  He will likely only be played on SG teams, and I think I'll enjoy him as long as I can fulfill the concept.  That said, I'm unsure how viable of a play strategy it is just because of how ToHit works.  So I am turning to the more number-savvy players present on this board.

 

Would a Dark/Ninja blaster, slotted with -ToHit in every power that will take it, successfully create the play-illusion that the enemies are surrounded by smoke, making it very hard to hit the player and his allies?

[Thunder Frog]

If you haven't got your heart set on a blaster, you might want to also consider a fire/dark controller.  You get 'Smoke' from fire/ and 'Darkest Night' from /dark (which you can colour to look like smoke too).  Then there's 'Char' on top too   'Tar Patch' might also fit your concept perhaps.

Edited September 18, 2019 by Thunder Frog

[Jeneki]

On 9/16/2019 at 4:23 PM, Winter said:

Would a Dark/Ninja blaster, slotted with -ToHit in every power that will take it, successfully create the play-illusion that the enemies are surrounded by smoke, making it very hard to hit the player and his allies?

The ToHit debuff from blinding powder will be the largest contributor.  That's around 11% when slotted up.  The blasts will contribute a smaller amount as well, and yes those will stack.  A special mention goes out to the T9 Blackstar, which will absolutely wreck enemies tohit, however that won't be up every fight.

 

In a vacuum using these debuffs, it'll be noticeable but not "very hard to hit the player and his allies" (other than Blackstar as mentioned above).  It'll depend if your SG team has defense buffs going around probably.

Edited September 18, 2019 by Jeneki

[Ico]

I built a dark/regen Sentinel, as a "tough support" sort of character. The idea was to stay up, stay unmezzed, and make the enemy not hit anything at all.  To that end, I slotted 3 -tohit IOs in every attack power (along with two +acc and one +dmg).

 

It worked... sort of. I mean, it seemed like the NPC hit less often. A little. But they still generally had no trouble at all shooting back. 

 

The exception was Blackstar. When I popped that after shooting them with the other attacks, nobody was hitting anything it seemed like. But it not up all the time.  I did remove all the -tohit IOs and sub in +dmg ones. I didn't really notice a difference in the how able the NPC was to shoot someone.  You might be able to get some -tohit juice out of the Incarnate stuff, but I haven't played him enough to go much past unlocking alpha.

 

Overall I don't think the idea worked.  The bonus on the tohit debuff IOs is small, and they modify an already small value. So it's really not worth slotting for -tohit. You're better off just killing the NPC faster.

 

Last couple months, that character has been parked in the university building stuff, since he's got a lot of recipes learned.

 

[City_of_Jedi]

 

On 9/16/2019 at 4:23 PM, Winter said:

the idea is that his powers obscure the enemies vision.

 

I had the same idea and ended up going Dominator. 

 

Take a look at this thread.

[Winter]

Thank you all for the replies!  I am disappointed to hear that I am more likely to kill the enemy before I really start to see -ToHit stack enough to make an impact, but glad to know it ahead of time rather than spending several hours grinding away only to figure that out later.  Thank you for the input.

[biostem]

11 minutes ago, Winter said:

Thank you all for the replies!  I am disappointed to hear that I am more likely to kill the enemy before I really start to see -ToHit stack enough to make an impact, but glad to know it ahead of time rather than spending several hours grinding away only to figure that out later.  Thank you for the input.

What about going with a fire control/nature affinity controller?  Between smoke and spore cloud, you'll have a bunch of -tohit going on.  Take pacify from the presence pool if you want yet another way of ditching enemy attention, or maybe stealth and eventually misdirection from the concealment pool...

[MindOverMatter]

I’m curious if you would be better suited using the /Devices on a blaster. You’ll get Smoke Grenade and a cloaking device as well as other gadgetry that could be useful in your stealthy pursuits.