Is Assault Rifles weak on Blasters?

[Xenorgh]

I believe I remember reading this somewhere, but I have an AR/Devices Blaster and i'm loving him and is probably going to be my 1st 50

 

Is it because of the narrow cone of Full Auto?  Because I don't have a problem with it, all I do to fix that up is to just walk up to the mob group and then just click it and watch the orange numbers fly everywhere.

But I generally don't know why they call it weak.

[Hopestar]

Assault Rifle is weak on every AT, the numbers are small, it's highly resisted damage typing, and its mostly cones that can't hit a whole group. There's other reasons, but I can't think of them for the moment.
Lots of numbers fly, but they're small.
Also see the testing Galaxy Brain was so gracious to spend time making:

 

Edited November 18, 2020 by Hopestar

[Xenorgh]

12 minutes ago, Hopestar said:

Assault Rifle is weak on every AT, the numbers are small, it's highly resisted damage typing, and its mostly cones that can't hit a whole group. There's other reasons, but I can't think of them for the moment.
Lots of numbers fly, but they're small.
Also see the testing Galaxy Brain was so gracious to spend time making:

 

I see, so basically you could say i'm playing an underdog powerset? (aside from sonic)

in which case this is nice to know atleast.

[Max Firepower]

It is an underdog, but there was a time it was called “Master of Cones.”

 

I had four AR 50’s back on Live.  My namesake was also AR/Dev.  
 

Where some ATs walk into a cave or a tight hallway and realize their playstyle may be limited, a close environment is good for you.  Dev has changed a lot, but it is a viable AT.  If you enjoy it, then you are doing it right - playing a game and having fun in your own way.

 

Lock and load, ladies.

[Mopery]

My AR/MM hoverblaster is lots of fun to play, and was relatively cheap to build(4 Thunderstrike sets and 4 Artillery sets don't cost very much and help to soft-cap ranged damage). Sure lethal is resisted, but for cones/taoe you'll also do fire, psi, and smashing damage, so it's not all lethal. Drain Psyche isn't very useful as you want to stay away from close range, but very few mobs actually fly up to you so it's pretty durable.

 

The hardest part about using cones is the AI and tab-targeting. It seems like the devs worked very hard to be sure that whatever you tab-target will be in the worst possible place for cone attacks, and the mobs seem to have a danger sense when you're about to press a cone attack and they suddenly run to a position where the least number of targets will be hit. Other than that if you can target the group's center then you'll lay waste to them.

[Mack008]

My first 50 back on live was a AR/Dev that I mostly solo'd with.  It definitely takes a different approach that other blasters.   I'd say you have to be more deliberate in your how you set up a fight, whereas with other sets it's easier to just start shooting.  And you have to be cognizant of a few things:  1) the knockback from a couple powers, 2) the different size/range cones, and 3) some powers have a very narrow niche.

[srmalloy]

On 11/19/2020 at 3:54 AM, Max Firepower said:

Where some ATs walk into a cave or a tight hallway and realize their playstyle may be limited, a close environment is good for you.

I recently ran a Citadel TF for the Notice with my AR/EM Blaster, and it was clear that AR was magnificently suited for the Council maps. Full Auto was up enough to lay waste to tunnel spawns, with Flamethrower and M30 Grenade and Buckshot while it was down, and there was nothing out of range of Sniper Rifle. Except for sniping, I wasn't dropping anything outright, but it set up the rest of the team to be attacking mobs at half health or less, and we just stormed through the maps.

[ScarRee]

One thing I did love about AR was that most powers can be slotted for the +Rech making the rech insanely fast. Add in the nades and stuff makes it a fun set to play. If you dont mind not being top dps

[Haijinx]

It is weak.

 

But its the least weak on Blasters.

 

 

[Chelsea Rorec]

Yes it's Weak! *ahem*

Dev's it's needs  a buff *cough*

 

 

[Gordoth]

OK, so the agreement is that AR is week.

 

Is there a secondary that helps cover its weakness more than others, if some sorry sucker was insistent on playing said week primary?

[eknudson]

/Energy can help. It's nice to have build up, it has some nice hard-hitting melee attacks, and boost range is really nice with all of AR's cone attacks. It makes it a bit easier to use all of those different length, different size cones.  It also gives you a load of stacking stuns.  No immob for ignite, though.

[Nemu]

People poo on a lot of things: Assault Rifle, "Nerfed" TA, LRM rocket, but you can still have fun with them. If only someone made a real manly RAMBO build...

 

 

[Gordoth]

It’s a bummer that no one has made a “real manly RAMBO build”.   <point & click>

[Plasmic Fury]

Well, if you want to compare powersets to powersets, AR isn't as strong as something like fire/fire.  Honestly, though...  IDC.  It is a blast to play.  One of my favorite toons is AR/Dev.  I loved the effects, and not many things are as satisfying as unleashing Full Auto on a mob.  Audio and effects...  LOVE it.  

 

In fact, on a different server my AR/Dev solo'd ITF at +0x1.  Webnade kept the AVs from running off and out of range.  He can fire farm at +4x8, but I have to be careful.  Without the taunt to keep the mobs in AOE, they scatter and its tedious picking them off...  Trops keeps the melee off of you.  Scorpion shield plus def bonuses had him defcapped.  Its a good build.  

 

Of course, he was T4'd all across the board, it was like a 700 mil inf build, had all the bonus accolades, like TFC, Atlas Medallion, and whatever the others are...  Can't remember off the top of my head.  Lot of work to build him, but I thought it was worth it so I started another.

 

In any case, check him out...

 

 

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[Chelsea Rorec]

On 11/18/2020 at 12:04 AM, Hopestar said:

Assault Rifle is weak on every AT, the numbers are small, it's highly resisted damage typing, and its mostly cones that can't hit a whole group. There's other reasons, but I can't think of them for the moment.
Lots of numbers fly, but they're small.
Also see the testing Galaxy Brain was so gracious to spend time making:

 

I love it when people say this stuff.

It's not like AR has, i dunno, fire aswell as lethal.

And cones are just that..cones. Have you considered like standing further back to catch the mob in the cone.

Cones will seem narrow if you are face to face with a mob

Flamethrower and Full Auto are quite a wide cone when used properly.

 

With any luck all the AR bashing will get it buffed then my overpowered AR/Dev will be horrificaly overpowered. 🙂

Carry on.

[Shred Monkey]

If I'm not mistaken, AR has the most AoE from Ranged attacks of any set.  Being able to do AoE damage is a big part of this game's general gameplay.  And doing it from range is a huge boost to survivability.

 

That said, it's got those old school long activation times in several powers that make them appear weak you crunch numbers.  It's due some love, IMHO, but it's not as bad as some make it out to be.

[Meknomancer]

Ar does have the best aoe and it sure is the most fun but most of it is kb or as Shred Monkey said the animation times, especially on the fire attacks like flamethrower and ignite. Ignite. wow. Is there a slower animating attack in game? If you haven't slotted for the kb and lets face it a lot don't attack 1 splatters the mob all over so attack 2 barely hits any of them. Its great having lots of aoe but firing them off in the right order so you actually hit stuff takes some work otherwise those aoe's basically turn into single target attacks. Its 1 of the most fun sets to play in game but it really needs some work.

[eknudson]

If--

1. Some of the animation times were cut down a bit--OK, most of the animation times
2. The DoT ticks were shorter
3. The over-use of lethal resistant mobs was cut down

Assault Rifle would be a lot more fun to play. Before all nukes became basically crashless there was maybe a reason to give FA such a long cast time. Not now.  There aren't that many 4 seconds attacks in all the blaster primaries, but AR gets two of them. Would be NICE if full auto had more like a 30 degree cone so I didn't feel like I had to hop back and forth in between Flamethrower, buckshot, and full auto in order to hit everything.

[Crysis]

On 1/26/2021 at 10:34 PM, Nemu said:

People poo on a lot of things: Assault Rifle, "Nerfed" TA, LRM rocket, but you can still have fun with them. If only someone made a real manly RAMBO build...

 

 

I have a fully T4’d out AR/TA build and greatly enjoyed playing the set, pre-TA nerf.  After the nerf, I respecced her, took OSA and slotted it out, had to change a bunch of other slots to try to get back to my softcapped numbers pre-nerf aaaaaaand.....

 

Sad panda.  That set isn’t top tier by any means, for all the reasons mentioned about AR.  But it’s much worse off now after the /TA changes.  Likely will melt it down for the IO investment as no reason to play it any longer.

 

 

[Nemu]

Well, that's because you probably took scorpion shield and thus didn't take LRM and thus didn't have a real manly Rambo build. If you took LRM instead you'd go from a sad panda to a manly badass panda, like this panda here.

 

[Coyote]

30 minutes ago, Nemu said:

Well, that's because you probably took scorpion shield and thus didn't take LRM and thus didn't have a real manly Rambo build. If you took LRM instead you'd go from a sad panda to a manly badass panda, like this panda here.

 

 

Helmet needs an integral grenade launcher.

Just sayin'

[Crysis]

1 hour ago, Nemu said:

Well, that's because you probably took scorpion shield and thus didn't take LRM and thus didn't have a real manly Rambo build. If you took LRM instead you'd go from a sad panda to a manly badass panda, like this panda here.

 

But....LRM man.  I’d rather be a sad panda than a mad panda, or a dead panda while I wait for it to throw it’s spitball of doom out the tube.

 

Next thing I know you’ll be wanting me to take and slot Ignite.

 

(checks thread)

 

Oh.

[dangeraaron10]

I asked the same question on Discord but got mixed reception on whether or not you skip Ignite.  

 

Either way, I think I'm going to go AR/Dev.  I tried Beam Rifle/Dev and while it has better numbers than AR I find Beam Rifle really boring.  AR has a mix of damage types and effects.  I'm not worried at all about the damage.

[BLVD]

I have an AR/Dev with an expensive build I'm pretty happy with. I'd say AR can make for a very capable blaster AS LONG as you're on a team that has some kind of crowd control.. whether that be a tanker, controller, etc. You're gonna be very happy with flamethrower, ignite, m30, and full auto mowing down tightly packed mobs. However, this is the only blaster I have that I cannot stand solo'ing x8 with. You won't be doing enough damage with your alpha strike to clear the minions & lieutenants so some of them are going to run away and you'll have to chase them down. I tried mitigating this with web envelope but it didn't do the job. So just keep that in mind if you want a combo that will be fun to solo x8 content with.