Ice/TA vs. BR/Time ---Which is best for end-game ST damage?

[BurningDezire]

Hello all,

I've got two alt blasters and trying to decide which to invest in. Ice/TA or BR/Time. Goal is to survive while dishing out high ST dmg. Which does higher ST dmg at end game content?

Edited February 14, 2020 by BurningDezire

[Novacat]

It depends on a few things, notably what enemies you're fighting.

 Ice can stack up some heavy hitters a lot faster. Freeze Ray (though a DoT) and Bitter Ice Blast are quick-cast high damage affairs and if you can bust out Blizzard and Ice Storm's full durations the area damage is very high as well. Over 10s you can be dealing some serious hurt, and a lot of it packs -recharge to make you safer too. Several of these are part smashing part cold, though.

Tac Arrow offers some solid utilities and an excellent Build-Up variant and offers slightly better self-buffs and protections. Has +recharge too.

 It also means you're stacking up some serious hold mags (you've got ice arrow too) quite easily. 

 

 Beam is a completely different beast. It's pathetic at AoE in comparison to Ice, and offers stuns instead of -recharge or holds. It's also Energy instead of mostly-cold with some cold/smash, so your preferred target profiles are going to be quite different.

 How it handles in single or 2-3 target affairs can be significantly worse ... or significantly better, depending on if you bother making good use of Disintegrate mechanics. Combine this with the simple job of lining 2 guys up (or at least just firing into a crowd) for Piercing and you've suddenly got a very different experience out of the set.

 Time isn't going to be adding much to your damage here, but it *will* be adding quite a bit of "effective" damage through -regen for the big guys (not that it's enough to stop it entirely but a few hundred % is a moderate amount of HP unhealed per second.

 And instead of holds, you've got a bunch of stuns. Less reliable sources than Ice's holds, but two of them are AoE (though one's loaded on your nuke)!

 

So, while it's also better in groups, for a quick cycling and no set-up, Ice is the stronger "out of the gate" option. If the fight's over the fight's over. Given some time to fire up (so not in fights that would last 5s with ice) and using Disintegrate like you're supposed to, against smaller numbers of targets like Elites, AVs and Giant Monsters, Beam Rifle will outperform it fairly handily.

Edited February 17, 2020 by Novacat
Can't forget holds, stuns and paragraphs

[Ironscarlet]

Beam and time would be a lot of jumping in and out gameplay.  Will feel cluncky  but will have really good - regen like above poster said could make a solo AV killer.

short answer, better ST, -regen , av killer

 

Ice/Ta really sync together.  The extra rech and def is just icing to Glue arrow with blizzard. Just really a good mesh together. Also with proc monster slotting pushes ahead in single target but because it lack the - regen AV will be harder to kill but you will live longer because of other TA abilities.

Short answer, better survivability, proc monster, better aoe with utilities.

 

The question is what are you looking if it were me I would go Ice/TA will just be a better leveling experience and end game will be better for almost all content and if you pvp it is a premier combo. Now if its a bragging solo AV with no pets thing; Beam/Time would be better /psi even better. One thing I learned in this game is play your favorite concept because that is the best experience you will have in game. Everything can be made super in this game its just  how super do you want to be and what you want to look like doing it.

Edited February 17, 2020 by Ironscarlet

[Novacat]

If you use the melee attacks there's jumping but if you ignore most of them it's not going to be much of a problem. End of Time isn't too too bad for jousting, has some -res built in and adds to the -regen, though aging touch is nothing special and future pain's just bad. You can probably ignore those two melee hits entirely leaving the whole set more comfortable around a base of 50 feet or so.

Leaves a bit more room for pools and patrons too.