New Blaster Suggestion

[Apparition]

Well, Hail of Bullets is bugged and is reduced in damage by 70%, and something tells me that it may not be fixed for a while.  In the meantime, I need a new Blaster.  I would like something that does decent single target damage, decent AoE damage, and isn't Fire Blast.  (Not that Fire Blast isn't great, it's the top ranged attack set for a reason.  I just find it boring, probably because everyone and their mother plays it.)  Any suggestions?

[Heraclea]

Some combos I have tried and enjoyed include:

 

Archery/Devices.  A pure blasty blaster.  A weapon set without Pistols' busy animations.  No melee attacks at all.  Many options in the secondary, from caltrops to trip mines, that serve to keep too friendly mobs at their distance and let you work raining death from afar.   Queen of Halloween.

 

Ice/Plants.  The blastroller, bringing holds and debuffs.  Three ranged ST holds and one targeted AoE hold made this blaster my character of choice to bring to Hamidon raids. 

 

 

[JStacy337]

Might I suggest a Water/Martial Blapper?  Ran it through the entirety of L1-20 Praetoria (Every contact, something over 400+ Merits earned) and it was almost too easy.

[Coyote]

Water/Plant. Very strong so far, going through Night Ward at a higher difficulty than any other character (I think +1/x5 or x6) and managing.

Archery/TA. Looks quite solid, with less defense but really good damage.

Ice/Temporal. Stronger on the defensive side with a lot of -Recharge and Holds.

[Nemu]

Take the path less traveled and try something interesting.

 

Rad/Elec or Water/Dark.

[Maris]

AR/Tac Arrow! Solid damage, great utility, lots of soft control. 

(And hard control with the top-tier lvl 38 power)

Edited June 29, 2020 by Maris

[Pzn]

Archery/Elec blapper.  You can rain of arrows every spawn to get your HoB fix and proc your secondary melee attacks heavily to make up for low ST damage of archery.  Rain of arrows animation time was buffed to 2 seconds on homecoming and with the no redraw option you can incorporate the quick snipe into a high damage blapping attack chain.

 

 

 

[ScarySai]

Beam/tac, beam/dev, fire/mental and ice/time are the best ones I've made so far.

[Lockpick]

On 6/27/2020 at 11:54 PM, Apparition said:

Well, Hail of Bullets is bugged and is reduced in damage by 70%, and something tells me that it may not be fixed for a while.  In the meantime, I need a new Blaster.  I would like something that does decent single target damage, decent AoE damage, and isn't Fire Blast.  (Not that Fire Blast isn't great, it's the top ranged attack set for a reason.  I just find it boring, probably because everyone and their mother plays it.)  Any suggestions?

All this time I just thought DP was weak.  Never thought it was a bug.  Hope it gets fixed soon as almost all my Blasters are DP.  As a matter of fact, I have so many DP characters my wife is getting suspicious...

 

My non-DP blasters are Archery/TA and Beam/Devices (strong).

[Rathulfr]

My current fave is Energy/Devices, which I play as a "ranged Stalker": sniping while hidden.  See my sig below for my other favorites.

[Sailboat]

On 6/29/2020 at 4:54 PM, Rathulfr said:

My current fave is Energy/Devices, which I play as a "ranged Stalker": sniping while hidden.  See my sig below for my other favorites.

I don't.   See you sig, that is.  Am I missing a setting?

[Rathulfr]

47 minutes ago, Sailboat said:

I don't.   See you sig, that is.  Am I missing a setting?

You must be reading on your phone.  It's visible in the computer browser, though.  I've copy-pasted it here:

 

@Rathstar

Energy/Energy Blaster (50+3) on Everlasting

Energy/Temporal Blaster (50+3) on Excelsior

Energy/Willpower Sentinel (50+3) on Indomitable

Energy/Energy Sentinel (50+1) on Torchbearer

[Sailboat]

Yeah, thanks.  I am currently enjoying a classic Energy/Energy Blaster, working on Ranged defense and whatever else I can cram in.  I really enjoy Bone Smasher so far, and plan to slot up a few Blaps for fun.  Not sure I'll have the durability to melee regularly, but I do like slamming anyone who runs up in my face.

[Chance Jackson]

On 6/28/2020 at 12:54 AM, Apparition said:

Well, Hail of Bullets is bugged and is reduced in damage by 70%, and something tells me that it may not be fixed for a while.  In the meantime, I need a new Blaster.  I would like something that does decent single target damage, decent AoE damage, and isn't Fire Blast.  (Not that Fire Blast isn't great, it's the top ranged attack set for a reason.  I just find it boring, probably because everyone and their mother plays it.)  Any suggestions?

When I'm in the mood for blasting (& not playing my AR/MA/Mace) I level a Dark/Atomic Blaster, Already have multiple end game builds mapped out in Mids too

Edited July 5, 2020 by Chance Jackson
Edited grammar & other details

[Demonbuttercup]

I have an energy/atomic blaster. She's really fun to play. 

[Mercurias]

I really enjoy my Water/Atomic Blaster. It’s a big ole AoE machine, and I’m able to run content on it in the 30s at around +0/x5 without IOs. 

[FUBARczar]

List of good combos is long, but to narrow it down to a few with more synergy...

Since no Fire then Psi/Martial - moves fast and hits hard, good mitigation but mostly ST, relies on Martial for AoE

Water/Martial - if you want more AoE

Ice/Plant - Three ST holds, -regen, -tohit in BIB and from Plant

Beam/Dev - It just works...

Archery/TA - As does this...

Radiation/Atomic - Great for Blapping, and Disorienting

 

 

[Apparition]

Thanks for all of the suggestions, y’all.  I went with Ice/Temporal.  Currently level 9 in Imperial City. 😃

[Saikochoro]

Wait hail of bullets is bugged? Is this recent? I haven’t taken my DP/MC blaster out for a spin in about a month for various reasons. I thought the damage was still decent then. Or have I been playing with a bugged HoB?

[Apparition]

39 minutes ago, Saikochoro said:

Wait hail of bullets is bugged? Is this recent? I haven’t taken my DP/MC blaster out for a spin in about a month for various reasons. I thought the damage was still decent then. Or have I been playing with a bugged HoB?

 

It started in mid-April.  Hail of Bullets only does the 30% lethal/fire/cold/toxic damage.  It doesn't do the 70% lethal damage at all.  I've had to shelve my Dual Pistols characters until it gets fixed.

[Saikochoro]

16 minutes ago, Apparition said:

 

It started in mid-April.  Hail of Bullets only does the 30% lethal/fire/cold/toxic damage.  It doesn't do the 70% lethal damage at all.  I've had to shelve my Dual Pistols characters until it gets fixed.

Ugh. That blows. My DP/MC blaster is my favorite toon. 

[Apparition]

Just now, Saikochoro said:

Ugh. That blows. My DP/MC blaster is my favorite toon. 

 

I hear you.  I wouldn't have even looked at another Blaster primary before.

[Bopper]

Plus, I think the other bug is still in effect with HoB, that causes insane levels of Defiance. So you lose HoB damage but gain a short fulcrum shift haha. 

[Ukase]

You simply cannot go wrong with Ice blast for a blaster's primary power set. 

You get a lot of options as to how you want to play it, too. You may opt to go the "blast-troller" route, or "blapper" route, or the much preferred by me, the standard blaster route. 

For secondary, there are some who don't see a lot of joy in the ice secondary, but you can always go for plant, mental manip, fire, atomic, or any of the others. Or all of the others. 
For me, I like Ice secondary, simply because of Ice Patch. Very useful when soloing large mobs. Easily perma'd with one recharge IO, hasten and a few LotG 7.5%'s. Oh! And Frigid Protection. It takes no endurance and gives you more endurance recovery than Stamina. It's an excellent place to slot an EXTRA perf shifter, or Power Transformation chance to heal. 

The thing about ice is the animations are so fast, that if you slot for recharge, you're going to be the best single target DPS blaster, built properly - but that all depends on slotting. 
You likely are already aware that you can't have the highest DPS AND be soft-capped for s/l/e with solid recharge. 

Another reason why ice blast is so good is that, like many of the characters we play, unless they're ice armor, they have very little resistance to cold damage. And almost none of them have any large resistance to the inherent slow/speed/recharge debuff. You don't really even need to slot for that, unless you're considering pvp. 

You can solo easily, if that's your cup of tea - and not just on 0/1 settings. If you've slotted for the appropriate toHit and Accuracy, you can go +4/4 fairly simply, and if you've got good reflexes, you might try +4/8 in the 40's. 

I would not get Bitter Freeze Ray, though. It can be useful, but only if you're patient and solo. On teams...it's the one power that has an animation too slow to be really effective. Does great damage, but given the animation, you could do better with other attacks. 

Other than that, all attacks are solid and worth getting in my opinion. 


And..I see you went with ice/time. Let me know how you like the secondary. I've got a fire/time working on the day job in ouro at level 1 currently. 

 

 

[Krajeek]

Blaster has become my favorite class since the i25 changes, and I've been having fun with a variety of them. I'll post them in the order of uniqueness and fun:

 

* Beam/Atomic/Mu. This is by far my favorite for ST damage, and I've been expanding him into AoE attacks. Disintegrate is an awesome power boost, and having a low-level hold in Atomic is beautiful, not to mention the debuffs.

 

* Water/Ice/Cold. Ice isn't a great secondary, but it fit with the concept. Water has great AoE, but smashing damage is highly resisted. Still, the ability to attack and recover HP is great in Dehydrate. The slow aura is good in ice, and keeps some melee enemies from attacking.

 

* Fire/Fire/Fire. Yeah, the same old same old, but this one is designed more for non-AE missions and has quite a bit of ST damage. I often run at +0/x4 without a problem, and get a lot of XP/recipe drops. Maybe I could run AE farming, but that's just not my thing.

 

Hope this helps.

Edited July 26, 2020 by Krajeek