Radiation Blast good things/bad things

[Snarky]

Other than a few touristy outings with Radiation Blast for themes I have not really delved into this set.

 

Can you kind folks walk me through some of the major points of the set?  I was thinking of pairing it with Temporal Manipulation.

 

 

[Max Firepower]

Fast activation, Low End use for the T1/T2 blasts.

Irradiate -  excellent power, great -Def, proc bomb.  PBAoE…

Aim, obviously.

I like the snipe.

The cone with the KB is a nice +rech slot, but I seldom feel like I needed to add a lot of Rech (other than Hasten, and not even always for that) unless your secondary or pool recharges are essential.

I take the AoE blast … sometimes.  Usually I take this OR a cone.

The Nova is very nice as well, great secondary fx.

 

I have run this on Blaster, Defenders, and Corrupters.  It was honestly pretty good on all of them.

 

Enjoy!  YMMV.

 

[brasilgringo]

I've tried it a bunch and on test IO'd out.  I cannot get past the slow animations / projectile travel times and the fact that a lot of the damage (even proc'd out) is DOTs.. If those things don't bother you, it's pretty easy to proc it out and it has some good proccing options.   Try copying a projected build over to Test and IO'ing it out per the Mids-import function, see how you like it.

[Aurora_Girl]

By the time you trigger Electron Haze and it actually does any damage, you could solo an ITF. Poison/Rad at 50, love everything else about rad blast. 

[Uun]

I really like Radiation Blast, although I've never tried it on a blaster. You can marry it to a lot of concepts by recoloring. The -def on all the powers is great and permits slotting many procs. Cosmic Burst combines high damage and a mag 3 stun, Atomic Blast (T9) has a mag 3 hold, Irradiate is a massive PBAoE. I agree that the long animation plus projectile travel time on both Electron Haze and Neutron Bomb is annoying, although I think Electron Haze is better than Fire Breath or Frost Breath. 

 

You should be aware that the damage scale and recharge of Neutrino Bolt and X-Ray Beam are different on blasters (and sentinels) than defenders and corruptors. All blaster T1/T2 blasts have the same damage scale (1.0/1.64) and recharge (4 sec/8 sec).  The defender and corruptor versions of Neutrino Bolt and X-Ray Beam have lower damage scale (0.6/1.0) and recharge (1.5 sec/4 sec).

[DreadShinobi]

Radiation Blast tends to perform very well on defenders because of how well it incorporates proc damage into its slotting. The -def alleviates lower accuracy slotting slightly when faced with tohit debuffs. Defenders/Corrs can also more readily afford to massively proc load rad blast because they have primaries that can make up the base stat deficit (kinetics, time manip). Blasters tend to prefer high base damage and fast animations and don't care as much if you can slot 2 dmg procs or 5 into a power because they would rather chase set bonuses (advantage: fire). Radiation Blast is also great with oppressive gloom, which is better accessed on defenders/corrs that get 120s soul drain in the same tertiary pool. OG+Cosmic Burst = 1 shot stunned bosses.

[Doomguide2005]

       That last bit about Cosmic Burst and OG is part of how my Emp/Rad/Dark managed to solo Cimeroran repeatedables on Invincible way back when.  Between CB, OG and Air Superiority she could handle 2 bosses plus all their spawn quite well.  Rebuilding her with IOs and procs on HC is definitely on my (scarily long) want to do list (closer to the top than bottom).  She was my first Green Machine and a good bit of the reason for my fondness of Empaths.

[Ukase]

As was referenced, I think a corr or a def. (if soloing) is the better use of rad blast than with a blaster. Try as I might with a blaster, I couldn't get it's debuffs or damage to be even close to the Echo:Positron summons pet. That may have been too high a bar to chase, but I tried. Obviously, someone smarter than I am might fare better, and my guy certainly lasted longer than the 4 minutes the summons pet did. 

The strength of rad blast is the inherent -def. May as well play a corruptor or defender and take full advantage. I think a blaster pretty much should be ice, fire or water primary - but those are just my own inherent biases coming out - obviously some folks really like dark blast, beam, etc. Just not me, lol. They're fine, but ice, fire and water will always be my go to choices for blast primaries, unless I'm just trying some gimmick out. 

[kelika2]

Perma Hasten build

Try Radiation/Fire/flame blaster.  Heat makes sense with radiation.  Whos going to argue with a green burning sword?  Or a flame colored atomic blast?

Radi blast:  Skip Bolt, Haze, Bomb.

Fire Manip:  Skip Burn, Hot Feet and Consume.  Also Combustion if you want, but I didnt.  Or you can use Burn instead of Combustion

 

Most of this characters life was in melee just melting stuff.  Blazing Aura with 3 acc/dmg hamis and 2 50+5 healing IOs and 1 50+5 endmod

Combusion>irradiate with blazing ticking felt amazing for low level stuff.  But things tend to die real fast at level 30+ for combustion to even finish animating

There are times I wish I had Burn but without  a constant taunt effect I opted out of it.  Hot Feet also sounds natural but its real late in the game and big on end.  COnsume was just not needed because of the various +recovery enhancements these days.  Plus 35/38 is when you(i) start working on Epic/Patron pools and ends up being a build tightness issue thing for me.

With enough +rech Fire Sword Circle can be your constant enemy delete power, or the nuke.  Obliteration sets and whatnot

 

Radi Bolt is too low damage, Haze has knockback and requires range, and bomb just doesnt have the damage to animation time that everything else can do

 

Flame Mastery because Bonfire can be useful.  Flame Shield to stack with Tough and the all important Rise of the Phoenix.  One Overwhelming Force: KB to KD in its baseslot turns it into a gigantic burn+ice patch

 

Why the long post?  Because I like DoTs and stacking a primary with a secondary to enhance or mesh well is always fun for me.

[DreadShinobi]

On 10/1/2021 at 10:15 AM, kelika2 said:

Fire Manip:  Skip Burn, Hot Feet and Consume.  Also Combustion if you want, but I didnt.  Or you can use Burn instead of Combustion

 

Combusion>irradiate with blazing ticking felt amazing for low level stuff.  But things tend to die real fast at level 30+ for combustion to even finish animating

There are times I wish I had Burn but without  a constant taunt effect I opted out of it.  Hot Feet also sounds natural but its real late in the game and big on end.  COnsume was just not needed because of the various +recovery enhancements these days.  Plus 35/38 is when you(i) start working on Epic/Patron pools and ends up being a build tightness issue thing for me.

 

Radi Bolt is too low damage, Haze has knockback and requires range, and bomb just doesnt have the damage to animation time that everything else can do

 

Flame Mastery because Bonfire can be useful.  Flame Shield to stack with Tough and the all important Rise of the Phoenix.  One Overwhelming Force: KB to KD in its baseslot turns it into a gigantic burn+ice patch

 

Why the long post?  Because I like DoTs and stacking a primary with a secondary to enhance or mesh well is always fun for me.

 

Burn is one of the best power picks /fire manip has access to. It has over double the DPA of combustion, and the damage is more frontloaded - it puts bodies on the floor at the start of the cast - combustion doesn't deal damage until after 3 seconds and then the damage is a full DoT. 

 

Neutron Bomb also has better DPA than combustion and is far safer to use. I see many people quote Neutron Bomb as having a long animation time, maybe it just has that *feel*, but it is sitting at a comfortable 1.67s (1.84s arcanatime) that is compared to the 3s combustion (3.168 arcana) and 2.67s FSC (2.904s arcana). 

 

Hot Feet does have a very high end cost. My Fire/Fire blaster always keeps it toggled on and doesn't have end issues, and he doesn't even have a performance shifter proc. I skipped consume on my /fire blaster, but it still a good power, not just for the endrefill but also the 50% end drain protection which is easily perma. It is also fully functional with just base slot, and you can put an Avalanche: knockdown proc in it to turn it into an aoe knockdown, which is pretty great. Hot Feet is worth it though, it deals better damage than cauterizing aura and has a much larger radius, they also stack. 1-2 seconds of an enemy turning their back on you from hot feet afraid status is often enough time for a blaster to put their face in the dirt. It is very effective mitigation for a blaster used properly. 

 

Mu Mastery Electrifying Fences became a cornerstone power pick for my /fire blaster and so if you are stuck on flame mastery Burn and Hot Feet are certainly not as attractive, but it is a huge loss in potential. With Electrifying Fences + Hot Feet/Burn you gain massive control over your ability to manipulate mob AI beyond the basic aspect of using the immobilize to pin them inside your Cauterizing Aura/Hot Feet/Burn death zone. The energy resist provided in charged armor is also an irreplaceable boon to your survivability that flame mastery cannot replicate - RotP is a crutch when death can be avoided all together 🙂

Edited October 3, 2021 by DreadShinobi

[GhostDawg]

On 9/25/2021 at 10:33 AM, Snarky said:

Other than a few touristy outings with Radiation Blast for themes I have not really delved into this set.

 

Can you kind folks walk me through some of the major points of the set?  I was thinking of pairing it with Temporal Manipulation.

 

 

Overall a good set.

 

Neutrino Bolt: Fast activation and recharge. Never liked it. Its damage is meh.

X-Ray Beam: Functionally and aesthetically  pleasing.

Irradiate: Solid PBAOE with good damage that can tank the defenses of targets.

Electron Haze: Not a fan. Its slow animation and questionable damage never did it for me. But now that you can change KB to KD it's likely worth it.

Aim: Is aim baby.

Proton Volley: Might just be my favorite snipe.

Cosmic Burst: Who doesn't love a high damaging stun?

Neutron Bomb: Hate it. Slow, with sucky damage. That being said I tend to take it to supplement my AoE potential. Though I may switch this to electron haze at some point.

Atomic Blast: Great nuke. As an added bonus to its ludicrous AoE damage you get a mass hold.

 

I have a vet level Rad/Atomic blaster and there are some nice synergies with that combo. Is Radiation Blast the best? Nah, but it's far from the worst. The damage is pure energy which bypasses a lot of in-game mob resistance. It doesn't have an annoying amount of KB and it has AIM a good snipe, and a sprinkling of control

.

Edited October 3, 2021 by GhostDawg

[Nostromo21]

Just made a Rad/Atomic theme blaster gal called "Raidioactive" (see where I'm going with that? ;).

Anyway, so far so good, if a bit squishy, as you'd expect from a blaster. Will def be hovering high above most mobs (except for hit & run with powers like Irradiate).

Shame no other AT has Atomic, as I really wanted a 'Nuclear' themed hero which kinda represents the Weak and Strong nuclear forces, call me crazy.

 

Some great advice from experienced players in this thread, save me a some respecs if nothing else - cheers all!