Fire/Atomic/Munitions questions about a few powers.

[Heraclea]

Mostly this is a question of not getting quite what I expected.

 

I typically skip melee powers on blasters.  I have heard Fire being praised and I wanted to check it out.  I paired with Atomic because I was also curious about that.

 

I built like a typical blaster, taking Stealth and Invisibility, relatively key to the build because of their usefulness as mules, though I could revise it and mule in Combat Jumping instead.  Similar considerations suggested my choice of Munitions; Body Armor is a useful mule.

 

Basic question: do I need to revise my expectations and turn the character into a tank?  Generally don't build blasters that way.  Rather I use stealth to set the terms of combat and avoid unnecessary aggro. But it turned out that Inferno is a melee attack.  Of course I took it, it's the nuke you get.  Atomic's t9 is also a melee attack. 

 

And you get a taunt aura in Beta Decay.  I did take it because I have enjoyed similar powers on armored characters.  But it's always dropping and I tend to leave it off when it does.  There's apparently another taunt aura in Radioactive Cloud, which I have not take yet given my disappointment with Beta Decay. 

 

I am also leery of trying to build for defense on squishies, since it's hard to get enough to make a difference, and without debuff resistance it's not all that valuable anyways.  Building resistance is much harder and it's almost impossible to get to the key number of 50% starting from zero.

 

Instead I built to my expectations taking Hasten, though on a blaster you seldom run out of attacks, and stealth, even though it's inconsistent with Beta Decay.  If I make a tough enough blaster Beta might just make Hasten needless.  I could drop all that for fighting pool, even if starting from zero I generally think that's lipstick on a pig as well.   

 

Any wisdom from the hive mind would be appreciated. 

[Zan]

Atomic is a set you need to embrace being in melee with if you want to get the most out of it. Atom Smasher is a devastating aoe, and your two melee attacks hit hard. Beta Decay doesn't do taunts, but it is a fantastic power that will make everything recharge faster when you're surrounded, and also helps improve your survivability. Rad Cloud is not an aura, just a pbaoe hold. Whether you want to use it or not depends on your playstyle.

[Heraclea]

The power description made it seem as if it were a toggle.  I guess it isn't, so I took it as my level 44 pick.  Not enough left for fighting pool unless I respec into it, so I will probably go with Maneuvers and Combat Jumping for the final two. 

[CaptainLupis]

I had beta decay and respecced out of it as it was constantly getting detoggled. While it's not a taunt aura per se, it does -tohit so it will cause aggro if you get too close while stealthed. Instead I built for ranged and smash/lethal defence, all of which are over 45% with the addition of the scorpion shield, I also built in some goal recharge. I have a couple of the melee attacks, mainly as mules for kinetic combat set, but frankly I don't really need them, Fire puts out a ton of AoE damage and Blaze, Blazing Bolt and Fire Blast do more than enough single target damage to finish off anything left after the AoEs. I also took hover/fly, maneuvers, hasten and the fighting pool. Boxing was useful as another mule set for KC, and tough and weave...well those are fairly obvious.

[Heraclea]

22 hours ago, CaptainLupis said:

I had beta decay and respecced out of it as it was constantly getting detoggled. While it's not a taunt aura per se, it does -tohit so it will cause aggro if you get too close while stealthed. Instead I built for ranged and smash/lethal defence, all of which are over 45% with the addition of the scorpion shield, I also built in some goal recharge. I have a couple of the melee attacks, mainly as mules for kinetic combat set, but frankly I don't really need them, Fire puts out a ton of AoE damage and Blaze, Blazing Bolt and Fire Blast do more than enough single target damage to finish off anything left after the AoEs. I also took hover/fly, maneuvers, hasten and the fighting pool. Boxing was useful as another mule set for KC, and tough and weave...well those are fairly obvious.

I may do the same, and will probably drop Rain of Fire and Fire Breath while I am at it.  Most shared Fire builds seem to skip them, though I worry whether I am going to end up with an endgame only build without them.   That usually isn't how I roll. and they do have worthwhile sets.  I went Munitions for Body Armor, and am using that to mule three resistance uniques. 

[CaptainLupis]

59 minutes ago, Heraclea said:

I may do the same, and will probably drop Rain of Fire and Fire Breath while I am at it.  Most shared Fire builds seem to skip them, though I worry whether I am going to end up with an endgame only build without them.   That usually isn't how I roll. and they do have worthwhile sets.  I went Munitions for Body Armor, and am using that to mule three resistance uniques. 

I have, and use, both. I never used to like the fire breath animation, and would probably have skipped it for aesthetic reasons, but now with the alternate animation I really enjoy it. Rain of fire, fire ball and fire breath and there will likely only be bosses left standing. I think it helps if you are hovering above the group while using fire breath as it essentially increases the radius of the cone making it more useful. If you are ground based you may not get as much joy out of it.

 

Whether you keep Rain of fire I'd say depends on whether you mainly team or want to solo at x8. When soloing at x8 I find rain of fire does good damage, but causes spawns to scatter, which makes the other AoEs harder to use effectively. On teams where there are aoe holds, immobs or taunt auras keeping them in the damage zone it's worth having, but of the 2 if I were dropping one it'd probably be this one, although I'd miss it.

 

I have tough to mule the res uniques. My build may not be optimal for things like taking down pylons, but it does just fine in actual gameplay including incarnate content and when exemping, and has the benefit of being pretty cheap as it uses sets like thunderstrikes and artillery, for the ranged def, which are not particularly expensive to get.