Help me find something new and fun

[Call Me Awesome]

I've had 3 level 50 Blasters, Fire/Energy (Boost Range!), Archery/Energy and Archery/TA.  Of them my favorite is the Fire/Energy; I'm soft capped to Ranged damage and always flying so there's a lot of survivability.  I built him for almost pure ranged attack... I have the required T1 "Get out of my face" power and I picked up Bone Smasher for when a mob got close (Bone/Thrust/Blast).  He's a bit endurance heavy running 3 leadership toggles, epic armor, Tough/Weave along with Fly but manageable.  I built him originally for the old fast snipe +tohit requirements and I'm always at max chance to hit.

 

The Archers were both a lot of fun; out of the box they have great range and they're extremely low endurance.  On the other hand Lethal damage is pretty commonly resisted and the damage output isn't even close to Fire.

 

 If you've had fun with your Fire/Fire blaster then you may enjoy running a melee character like a Scrapper or Stalker... you'll get a ton of in your face damage along with great durability.  Or maybe go another direction with a Defender or Controller and focus on the team instead of purely on damage output.

[EyeLuvBooks]

Water/Dark is my current flavor of the month. I love the animations and it brings a lot of things to the table.

[DethStryke]

I just lvled up a fire/plant/fire. I really like /plant cause it gives some nice control with some scrapperlike melee. I have a fire/fire/fire that I really enjoy, but wanted something a little different. 

[Ukase]

On 2/14/2020 at 12:29 PM, Nemu said:

Fire/Elec/Mace

 

It's the fire/fire you always wanted but with more SMASH!

 

Pros:

1 Most of your attacks have 1 second animations, except thunderstrike.

2 Force of thunder and thunderstrike can chain juggle KD mobs and they are great FF proc mules as well

3 With scorpion shield you can almost softcap S/L/E/F/C

4 The melee attacks are crunchy and feels good

5 Endurance management via powersink and force of thunder

6 INFERNO!!!

7 When you activate thunderstrike yell "COOOOOMBBOOOOO BREAKER!!!"

8 It's not a sissy ranged blaster combo. You are damage incarnate and a MF'ing tank mage. Man up and get in there and punch face!

 

 

 

I actually just t-4'd a fire/elec/mace today - aside from the Alpha..it's only t-3. Still need to do 2 more weeklies because I'm too cheap to use emp merits on Alpha slots. 

My build is very similar to this - except instead of red fortunes, I used Shield Walls to take advantage of the increased max health bonuses, and instead of Rectified Reticle, I used 3-slot Gaussian's for more HP. My net result is a little less defense with a capped HP.  

That said - while I'll always love fire primary - I wasn't a fan of the secondary. Thunderstrike is more of a mule power than anything else because of the lengthy animation. I've gotten accustomed to toggles like Frigid Protection and Cauterizing Aura. So much nicer than Force of Thunder, imo. 

There's a reason fire/fire is so popular. Because it truly is better, at least for my play-style. 

[Nemu]

I would say force of thunder is the BEST sustain power because how versatile it is. Even with no targets it will still provide the sustain bonuses and trigger the FF proc, but with targets it's fantastic aoe mitigation with a large radius and target cap. Plus I don't have to worry about detoggling it for speed runs when I need to stealth missions.

 

I think most people look at Thunderstrike in a vacuum without considering synergies. It has a long animation and it feels bad when someone else kills the target before the animation finishes but the splash damage and KD still happens and it's also got a large target cap. Together with Force of Thunder these two powers allow you to go toe to toe with multiple harder targets that don't get two shot like most fodder such as the nictus ambush or multiple roman bosses in a +4/8 ITF , or multiple Rikti bosses/magus during an MSR, all the while triggering FF procs.

 

Assuming the necessary defenses in your build, if you just want to do loads of AoE damage and be able to survive the retaliation go /fire. If you want to be a MFing face smashing tank mage go /elec.