Sonic secondary paired with energy blasts

[liammcder4]

Would you share your thoughts on how one might build the sonic secondary on this type of blaster? Is this a secondary that performs well enough to develop? Thanks.

[Nemu]

Sonic Secondary is melee heavy. Sleep protection is pretty relevant in sound barrier. Disruption aura is a bit of a trap power, the -res looks nice but it 1) forces you to stay in melee range, and 2) shuts down to mez and you'll find yourself re-toggling it often. Take it way late in the game as you approach 50 unless you are running with decent support that can keep you protected from mez all the time (good luck finding those players).

 

Do take sound barrier at level 20 when it opens up. It'll alleviate your endurance issues or make them go away completely.

 

If you skip all the melee stuff as most new players do it's still fine. You won't be the first to do so. If you want to embrace melee later on in your career then it only gets better as a secondary.

[oedipus_tex]

Sonic Manipulation is a rare blaster secondary with a -Resist debuff built into it, but it's a PBAoE with a small radius. One of Energy Blast's key AoEs is a medium ranged cone. How well you feel you can leverage both of those elements will probably dictate how the combo feels to you. This is assuming of course that you've converted kb to kd to avoid blowing stuff out of range.

 

Personally I think sets that rely less on cones probably feel better paired with Sonic. For example, Water Blast is pretty similar to Energy Blast but with less coney-ness, if it fits your concept. Radiation and Electric Blast don't have any cones at all. Fire or Ice do have cones, but they are less reliant on them. Interestingly, the Sonic Attack set itself is all cones except for the nuke and personally probably make me a bit uncomfortable.

 

You could of course find ways to still use the aura with a cone, or mostly ignore the aura since the debuff isn't that critical. But a -14% resist debuff is pretty significant if you can leverage it. People tend to not think of it as much, but it probably does significantly more PBAoE damage than a standard damage aura. It even multiplies proc, teammate, and Lore pet damage.

Edited March 18, 2022 by oedipus_tex

[InvaderStych]

I like /Sonic; however, in addition to all of the above Deafening Wave is currently, erroneously, flagged to ignore outside buffs.  This includes +dmg from anything that isn't an enhancement as well as the +special baked into Sound Booster and other sources of +special.

 

I have a Rad/Sonic patiently waiting for the fix, hopefully it is on the list of "low hanging fruit" fixes in a patch not to far in the future.

 

The T1 repel is an excellent tool, and Earsplitter is also very good.  Jury is out on Sound Cannon - on the surface a useful opening tool, but in practice it doesn't seem very reliable.

 

Leveraging the hold mechanic is key for the set, not just for the extra dmg procs although those are useful.

[Chelsea Rorec]

I made a Water/Sonic and my choice was based on the Target AoE's in water blast.

I thought oooooo sonics deafening wave will be good with waters AoE and the -res from disruption aura will be awesome.

Yeeeaah ...No.

Sonic is the set i love to hate. It looks great on paper but in practise it really lacks.

Deafening wave is very low damage and the detoggle on disruption aura is anyoing.

But on the other hand the smash/energy res is great and Earsplitter is awesome.

 

 

[Frozen Burn]

I agree with @Chelsea Rorec.  I found /Sonic to be "meh."  It sounds good, but just doesn't sing (puns intended).  I made a DP/Sonic and designed him to always be in point blank range.  Combat teleport, Fold Space, fighting pool, Scorp Shield, and all the fun sets to help keep him alive while in melee range.  He's fun to play in that regard, but his performance is underwhelming.

 

The -Res aura is way too small.  Deafening Wave does the least amount of damage for similar powers from other secondaries - and it shows - it's very underwhelming, however the occasional chance for hold on minions it has is nice. 

 

Sound Cannon, I skipped because it was a Stun/KB cone with no damage - it didn't fit with my "point blank" killing theme.  However, this can be useful with Energy Blast.  

 

So for an Energy/Sonic Blaster - fortunately, the lackluster powers are the ones you'd want to skip!  For the /Sonic set, I'd take:

• Sonic Thrust (you have to anyway, but even if there was a choice, I'd take it!  It's that good and useful.)
• Strident Echo - always good to have a melee power for when mobs rush you and it has a chance to hold minions.
• Sound Booster - gotta have Build Up!
• Sound Barrier - solves your end problems and gives other buffs (a MUST take and at lvl 20 when it's available)
• Sound Cannon - the Stun/KB cone will stack nicely with Energy Blast's KB
• Earsplitter - having another high damage melee attack is always good - also has a chance to hold LTs.

Add in the hold, if you want.  And as someone mentioned above, if you want to add in Disruption Aura for the little bit of -Resist for when mobs rush you, then take it late in the build - otherwise, just skip it.

[InvaderStych]

35 minutes ago, Frozen Burn said:

Deafening Wave does the least amount of damage for similar powers from other secondaries - and it shows - it's very underwhelming, however the occasional chance for hold on minions it has is nice. 

 

Two things about DW:

 

First, (at the risk of repeating myself) it is broken and needs to have the flag "Ignores External Strength Boosts" removed in order to perform closer to other similar powers which are not flagged as such.  DW does not accept any +dmg from any source other than enhancements, and Sound Boosters +special does not improve its hold either.  This is why it is "underwhelming."  When you hit Aim or Build-up, DW's damage is not boosted. It's nice to have an AoE that can be proc-bombed, but it still needs that flag removed regardless.

 

Second, the Hold is in 2 parts:

 

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=blaster_support.sonic_manipulation.deafening_wave

 

Note that the first is flagged to "Suppress when damaged."  It will hold a boss, but only until they take damage - sort of like a Fear.  That, of course, has limited value, but there it is. 🤷‍♂️

 

The trick is to open with Echo Chamber (Or Char if one is taking Char, because Blaster Char is on 16s recharge while every other version from an Epic/Patron pool is 32s) on either the hard target or the annoying one, then close to melee, drop DW, then Earsplitter something into oblivion and go from there.

Edited March 20, 2022 by InvaderStych

[Frozen Burn]

5 minutes ago, InvaderStych said:

 

Two things about DW:

 

First, (at the risk of repeating myself) it is broken and needs to have the flag "Ignores External Strength Boosts" removed in order to perform closer to other similar powers which are not flagged as such.  DW does not accept any +dmg from any source other than enhancements, and Sound Boosters +special does not improve its hold either.  This is why it is "underwhelming."  When you hit Aim or Build-up, DW's damage is not boosted. It's nice to have an AoE that can be proc-bombed, but it still needs that flag removed regardless.

 

Second, the Hold is in 2 parts:

 

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=blaster_support.sonic_manipulation.deafening_wave

 

Note that the first is flagged to "Suppress when damaged."  It will hold a boss, but only until they take damage - sort of like a Fear.  That, of course, has limited value, but there it is. 🤷‍♂️

 

The trick is to open with Echo Chamber (Or Char if one is taking Char, because Blaster Char is on 16s recharge while every other version from an Epic/Patron pool is 32s) on either the hard target or the annoying one, then close to melee, drop DW, then Earsplitter something into oblivion and go from there.

 

Thanks for the elaboration on the hold mechanics.  Good to know!

 

I do realize that Deafening Wave is broken in that it doesn't accept +dmg from other sources.  And yes, that is a big part of it's underwhelming performance. 

 

But what I meant was, the base enhanceable damage for the power is ALSO lower than other sets with similar PBAOEs.  Deafening Wave's base dmg = 60.92.  All others are:  

• Atom Smasher = 86.31
• Fire Sword Circle = 97.05
• Frozen Aura = 79.19
• Dragon's Tail = 65.62
• Psychic Shockwave = 68.82
• The Lotus Drops = 75.63
• Thorn Burst = 65.96
• End of Time = 68.51

Having played all these other sets, this adds to it really feeling "blah."  I noticed it as I was leveling up and before I got my Build Up and Aim and set bonuses.  I had always hoped it would get better, and obviously, it didn't since it is broken.  But even with the enhanceable damage being the lowest out there, I still felt it. 

[InvaderStych]

19 minutes ago, Frozen Burn said:

• Atom Smasher = 86.31
• Fire Sword Circle = 97.05
• Frozen Aura = 79.19
• Dragon's Tail = 65.62
• Psychic Shockwave = 68.82
• The Lotus Drops = 75.63
• Thorn Burst = 65.96
• End of Time = 68.51

 

Thanks for the list.  I knew DW had a lower base value, but not by how much.  It should definitely get a bump.  Looking at the list (and not knowing the secondary effect on all of them from memory) it appears that DW should be at least as much as Dragon's or Thorn.  Arguably more as Dragon's Tail has that awesome KD that is far more effective than the minor/wonky hold in DW.  Probably should be in line with End of Time, or perhaps someplace between that and the next one up the list (Lotus).

 

Echo Chamber also needs a boost.  Char from the APP is superior by (almost) every numerical measure.  Longer range, higher damage, longer duration hold, higher mag hold.  Ridiculous.