Def or Resist for F^3 blaster build

[Greentea]

Hello all! 

 

I'm working on Fire/Fire/Flame blaster, I really love the raw DPS he throws at. However, I'm confused about which one should I focus on; Defense or Resistance?

 

I'll explain why I'm confused, Fire Blast is mostly ranged, so obviously I should focus on ranged defenses, right? However, the Fire Manipulation have lots of melee abilities along with one from Fire Blast; Inferno. With that being said, I should increase my s/l resistances...Please senpai, guide me!

[Krazie Ivan]

typically, low HP cap ATs work best with Def & high HP (Tanks/Brutes/HP-boosted Scraps to a point) allows Res builds to be effective.

and yeah, Fire/Fire shines in Melee. best i managed on my Fire3, was 40/33/40 Melee/Range/AoE, but the high-likelihood of a teammate running Maneuvers meant i was always softcapped. that allowed me to have SLF Res in the mid/upper 50's, 22% ToHit for insta-snipe, & pretty decent 125% +Rech. late-game pure Energy attacks can hurt.

[Parabola]

There are a few different things to look at here. Firstly in general it is much easier to add significant defence than resistance to a build. Set bonuses give more defence and there are way more pool powers that give defence than resistance.

 

The easiest thing to build up is ranged defence on a blaster. Thunderstrike, artillery and even mako's bite make it fairly cheap to do so. The ato's both provide ranged def and if you're throwing any kind of money at the build you are likely to have those.

 

As you say you are likely to be blapping on this build but ranged defence is still going to be very useful. Blappers don't have all enemies making melee attacks against them. You have no taunt effect to draw them in and anything stood right next to you is likely being incinerated in short order. The danger is really in the enemies standing around the edges shooting you with ranged attacks. This is made doubly true by the fact that the majority of mez is attached to ranged attacks and you really want to be avoiding these wherever you are standing.

 

Having said which I tend to try to build for s/l defence as well on blappers. The coverage between s/l and ranged seems pretty good overall and results in a tough blaster. Doing this does really mean going for either the ice or mace epic pool though for the shield. Mace having the advantage of bringing energy defence along for the ride.

 

But of course concept>any other factor so if I were building a fire/fire/fire I think I'd go for the ranged softcap, pick up the odd bit of s/l res and see if that in combination with bonfire and the afraid/slow effects were enough.

[fitzsimmons]

It’s expensive but you can get softcapped to s/l/f/c/e and come very close on negative (between 40 and 45.  Fun to play.

 

Or you could go ranged and then get bonfire for extra mitigation for when you get in close.

[Haijinx]

Defense is much better for blasters.  Due to the way Status effects work.  

 

Its the /flame part that is making it harder since that armor adds resist not def 

 

Choose /mace instead and its pretty easy to get lots of S/L def with Scorpion Shield 

[Hyperstrike]

Blasters don't have enough HP to make a Resist-centric build worthwhile.

You're better off with a Defense build.

[Greentea]

Thank you all for the replies! It definitely help me a lot, I didn't know about the defense for low HP and resistance for high HP. 

 

One of my fire/fire builds [with different results] have 45% e/n and almost 45 [44.92 lol] ranged. I just need to test it out this weekend, but I will probably fix that build to get a little bit more of ranged defense.

On 7/15/2020 at 8:19 AM, fitzsimmons said:

It’s expensive but you can get softcapped to s/l/f/c/e and come very close on negative (between 40 and 45.  Fun to play.

 

Or you could go ranged and then get bonfire for extra mitigation for when you get in close.

Just out of curiosity; are you referring to Ice defense shield or the winter set bonuses? Perhaps both? I have a few full winter sets, I don't mind stripping them off inactive toons.

I haven't test Ice mastery yet, I'm not a big fan of the cold. 😛

 

8 hours ago, Haijinx said:

Due to the way Status effects work.  

 

 Can you elaborate on that part? Do you mean most of mez abilities can be miss due to defenses?

Edited July 16, 2020 by Meowstic

[fitzsimmons]

Winters and ATOs

[Haijinx]

27 minutes ago, Meowstic said:

Thank you all for the replies! It definitely help me a lot, I didn't know about the defense for low HP and resistance for high HP. 

 

One of my fire/fire builds [with different results] have 45% e/n and almost 45 [44.92 lol] ranged. I just need to test it out this weekend, but I will probably fix that build to get a little bit more of ranged defense.

Just out of curiosity; are you referring to Ice defense shield or the winter set bonuses? Perhaps both? I have a few full winter sets, I don't mind stripping them off inactive toons.

I haven't test Ice mastery yet, I'm not a big fan of the cold. 😛

 

 Can you elaborate on that part? Do you mean most of mez abilities can be miss due to defenses?

Yes.  Defense gives you effectively status affect avoidance.  Since a lot of effects miss. 

 

Since even with your Ato humming along you'll only have 1-2 mag protection, if you can't avoid effects you'll be stunned/held/etc a lot.