Water/Martial Request

[JStacy337]

Members of the Blaster community, I come to you for a request.  As someone who has not rolled a Blaster since i2ish, I am at a loss for direction.

 

I recently rolled this character as a concept, but then started having fun with her while leveling through Praetoria.

 

I am currently only L13, so not too far along.  I would like to keep Reach for the Limit and Speed of Sound if at all possible.  Whirlpool and Burst of Speed, while nice, have not been seeing much use as things tend to melt with just a steady rotation of Bolt>Burst/Dehydrate ,the P2W attacks, and Ki Push whenever mobs get in close (did not take Storm Kick as I had planned to avoid BLAPping, but I'm not averse to the style.  Also, for when I get that high, how does Martial Combat>Reaction Time work?  It's a toggle that needs to be de-toggled for full effect?

 

I'm not over-flowing with INF, so I would love to have a starter build (non-Purple) to begin to work towards.

 

Again, thank you for reading/responding and any and all help is greatly appreciated.  Much love to you and yours today and everyday.

[Coyote]

17 hours ago, wyldchyld said:

Also, for when I get that high, how does Martial Combat>Reaction Time work?  It's a toggle that needs to be de-toggled for full effect?

 

It's your Sustain (+Absorb, +Recovery) toggle, so generally you WON'T detoggle it. However, it also has a nice large -Speed debuff, which makes it easier to kite mobs (especially with other -Speed debuffs... like Whirlpool). But this debuff will aggro mobs if you're going around Stealthed, so you may have reasons to detoggle it when moving between missions or when Stealthing missions. After you detoggle it, you get +40% Recharge... maybe for about 10 seconds? I forget the duration.

 

Whirlpool and Burst of Speed are nice powers, and more useful in an AoE situation. Mobs in Praetoria are tough, and soloing you generally don't see large clumps of victims, so these AoE powers aren't that useful now. Later when you get strong enough to fight at +1/x4 or something, AoEs are nice, so you will want them. But you can look to pick them up starting in the 20s if you're doing the tougher Praetoria content where you will generally keep the difficulty lower for longer.

 

Skip Storm Kick. The damage is nice, but it's not worth Blapping for a single attack, and the later melee attack is also not impressive. Dragon's Tail is nice, especially paired with Burst of Speed: BoS -> DK -> BoS -> Ball of Water (name?) -> BoS for the last time .... is a lot of PBAoE damage. But a single-target attack is not worth going into melee. Ki Push, however, is great.. because it has a 2 second Hold (mag 4), it will Hold Bosses. Usually, trying to keep Bosses mezzed with a knockback power is hard because if you hit them while they're getting up, they're immune to KB, and if you hit them too late after they're up, they get an attack off. But Ki Push's 2 second Hold (and 2 second delay on triggering the knockback) means that it's easy to Ki Push them, shoot them twice, then run up and repeat as they're almost up... they get Held for 2 seconds and their knockback immunity fades and THEN they get knocked back again. Repeat until dead.

[Frostweaver]

I disagree with coyote a little bit. Water is a naturally pure ranged set, but MC is utterly Blappery... and as a set with a LOT of omni-directional aoe and decent mitigation at all ranges, water/mc slips right into blapperspace beautifully.

Reaction time's -recharge and the TIME it makes things to run into melee range with you, as well as the -speed that makes whirlpool VASTLY more deadly at close range, turn you into a point-blank machine... you also have a ton of healing and absorption going on, and most of your aoe's have the enemy flopping as well... even though, as a blaster, your melee defense is guaranteed to be lower than your ranged defense, that doesn't matter when nothing can actually stand up long enough to do enough damage to break your absorption. And later, of course, you can always take the melee hybrid to taunt them and crank up your defense at the same time.

In blapperspace, eagle's claw is absolutely BRUTAL, outdamaging every single st and aoe attack you have except your nuke, and out-dps'ing the crap out of that as well. outstanding boss killer, and if you set inner will on 'auto' you almost never have to worry about any kind of mez effects... although I would reccommend taking some -KB IO's or set bonuses since kb doesn't trigger inner will. Just remember that your 'blapperyness' is in the range when they stop running so fast but are just outside of melee range... and are panicking and running away VERY slowly. That is your golden range, and eagle's claw is to punish the very few that get inside of that range... with ki push to help keep the few troublesome ones staying OUTSIDE.

Ue the burst of speed macro /bind G "powexec_location target Burst Of Speed" in order to initially traumatize a big spawn, flicking it three times as you dragon's tail, water burst, nuke, or whirlpool... once you get to whirlpool, the spawn is your complete bitch. I will usually BOS once, dragon's tail to break alpha, bos a second time, nuke or water burst, and then bos a third time to drop a hugely damage-boosted whirlpool, following up with (now fully combo charged) whatever I need, from a heal/drain to a double water bolt, another water burst... hit the boss with eagle's claw and then finish him at your leisure... You have lots of options, which is good because your attack chain changes based on your combo level.

Any dips, mezzes, or low health/end is taken care of by auto-inner will. Only EB's and such actually need you to pop an inspiration or two.

[JStacy337]

Here is my build as it is being played after just finishing all of the 1-20 Praetoria content (only 2 deaths with it, too!).  Pay no attention to empty slots as those are being filled with just bare-bones L20 non-set IOs (Acc, Rech, Dam) and the such.

 

Again, if anyone has a build, or builds, for this lying around, I would love to be able to see what to aim for when that times comes.

 

And thank you to both @Coyote and @Frostweaver for your inputs so far.  I have macro'd Burst of Speed to make it more manageable, but I failed to grab Dragon's Tail as I have almost found a great rhythm with the combat of those Prae-arcs, but I am not against changing everything up.

 

I was planning to fit Acrobatics and Tough/Weave into the build, so some tips would be appreciated.

 

Again, thank you all so much for putting up with our questions.

 

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[Krinkle]

Sorry to necro. Did you ever work out a final build? i'm at the point where you left off. I wish it had dragon's kick in there, instead of three movement skills? maybe speed of sound, and jumping, and combat jumping are all vital. I'm just not confident enough to know what i'd get rid of for the kick. My visual asthetic is i'm sliding around on a constant spray of water so maybe speed of sound could go? I wish i knew if adrenal booster or jaunt or some other experimentation ability was vital later on or not.