Looking For An Extreme Beam (Rifle)

[Clave Dark 5]

I have a rather vague concept character I want to make with the Beam Rifle set; the other power set can be anything, and the AT isn't important either. 

 

Have you got a build for a Beamer that you'd consider "extreme"?  I'd like to hear about it!  (Seeing it would be even better of course)

 

But hey, that's a silly request, probably, so feel free to just tell me which AT can utilize their Beam Rifles the best and what you might pair with it for extra uh beamery-goodness.

 

ETA - thread title fixed, ha ha

 

Edited October 11, 2022 by Clave Dark 5

[Astralock]

Back on live during Really Hard Way Magisterium trial runs, there were so, so many Beam Rifle/Cold Corruptors, Beam Rifle/Dark Miasma Corruptors, Beam Rifle/Kinetics Corruptors, Beam Rifle/Radiation Emission Corruptors, Beam Rifle/Time Manipulation Corruptors.  It felt like we were playing Ghostbusters more than City of Heroes.   Really, just pick one.  

[Clave Dark 5]

..Does it have to be a Corr?  😃

[Psyonico]

My two favorite Beam characters that I've played are Beam/Traps Corr and Beam/Invulnerability Sentinel.  Here are their builds.

Beam-Invul Sentinel.mxd Beam-Traps Corr.mxd

[Ringo]

9 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

..Does it have to be a Corr?  😃

If you want the DoTs on Disintegrate and Overcharge to proc Scourge, then yes it does

 

Honestly, Beam Rifle has a few choices on how you really want to leverage it into any build.

 - Disintegrate.  Does DoT.  Does -150% Regen for 15s.  Can cause Disintegration Spread on clumped targets which is mostly what triggers:

- 3 Knockdown powers

- 2 Disorient powers

- 2 -def powers

- 1 -res power

 

Knockdown and Disorient powers add to your survivability.  More KD in your secondary might not be necessary, but more Disorient will stack

-regen, -def, -res all help with taking down hard targets.  -regen is definitely something worth stacking, while the -def and -res aren't as hefty overall.

 

With the exception of Single Shot, Beam Rifle attacks are all roughly 2 seconds or more each.  You won't have the quickest attack chain, and may have a harder time leveraging a more active secondary (or defender primary).  Beam Rifle also needs you to use your attacks in a set order to properly benefit from the Disintegration effect.  Disintegrate is always your opener is you're looking to make use of Beam Rifle's added effects.  Lancer Shot is the only 100% chance to proc Disintegration Spread after hitting your Disintegrate target.  Cutting Beams has a 100% chance to add DoTs to any targets already having Disintegration.  Single Shot gives a 10 second -75% regen debuff to targets suffering from Disintegration.  Overcharge Disorients on Disintegrated Targets.  Charged Shot, Penetrating Ray, and Piercing Beam all add bonus damage to Disintegrated targets.  Penetrating Ray, Charged Shot, and Single Shot all have a chance to proc Disintegration Spread as well (at 55%, 39%, and 20% respectively)

 

So all that said.. I would be looking for an AT/powerset combo that does the following things:

1) Has a lot of fire and forget powers, allowing me to Blast more

2) Has survivability allowing me to Blast more without running for my life

3) Can make use of the -regen, DoTs, and Disorients that Beam Rifle brings by blasting more

4) Having only 1 real Cone and 1 Targeted AoE, can make use of being in Melee in ways that wouldn't work on other Blast sets

 

So already seems to be leaning hard into Sentinel right off the bat there!  Dark Armor has some good Aura powers (Disorient!), Fire Armor has Burn, Ice and Rad both have PBAoE powers,.

 

Corr/Defender probably also has some good build potential with Kinetics, Time, and Poison having reasons to get into Melee and Storm adding more Disorients and Knockdown. 

 

Blaster if you want damage - a lot of the Blaster Secondaries have PbAoE toggles or powers plus Disorients that you can hopefully stack to keep you alive in and around Melee, but Survival is not Guaranteed

[TygerDarkstorm]

I have a Pain Dom/Beam Defender who is fun; I like to bring her on things like TinPex where you get some longish lasting AV's to make use of the increased debuffs brought by the two powersets.

 

My other beam is a Beam/Devices blaster; mine's still a baby but I've seen quite a few others on the forums saying how much they love theirs.

[Ringo]

I have a Beam/Poison Corr and a Beam/Dev blaster, neither at 50.  I like them, but I always forget how to play Beam Rifle effectively

 

After looking into it for my previous post, my next BR will probably be a Dark Armor or Ice Armor Sentinel

[biostem]

18 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

I have a rather vague concept character I want to make with the Beam Rifle set; the other power set can be anything, and the AT isn't important either. 

 

Have you got a build for a Beamer that you'd consider "extreme"?  I'd like to hear about it!  (Seeing it would be even better of course)

 

But hey, that's a silly request, probably, so feel free to just tell me which AT can utilize their Beam Rifles the best and what you might pair with it for extra uh beamery-goodness.

 

ETA - thread title fixed, ha ha

Take a look at the upcoming sentinel changes, and consider that armor sets like bio or ninjitsu have ways of furthering your damage.  Personally, I really like how radiation armor pairs with sentinel primaries, since you get additional recharge reduction and a perm-able absorb/+recover barrier, so you can keep attacking with reckless abandon...

[Clave Dark 5]

• I haven't played a Sent past like 12th level for some reason; knowing they're getting some love soon might compel me to give them a spin for the novelty of it all. 
• I had started a BR/Traps once but lost interest for some reason; sometimes character concept just doesn't hold interest you know?  Plus I am very conversant with Traps already.
• Ringo's right about BR, the other power set benefits if it's more fire and forget; so that's another argument for Sent.
• Poison might be interesting though, as there's a lot of skippage potential in there, which might leave me more power choices to make my character weird (like, I dunno, taking everything from Psychic Mastery or something; I like going off on tangents).

Food for thought, there are all good suggestions!  And keep 'em coming if you come up with something more.  I'm probably not going to make this one until after ToT season... or that Sent love shows up.

[roleki]

I really like my Beam/TA Corruptor, but it tends to kill stuff too fast to dazzle me with Scourge messages the way I expected it to when I first drafted the build.  I was *this* close to rolling up a TA/Beam Defender to see how that went, but let's just say recent developments have pretty much blunted my interest in taking part in these little experiments.

[Uun]

I've got a Cold/Beam defender that performs really well on HM and 801 stuff. I understand the arguments in favor of corruptors, but defenders get stronger buff/debuff values (except for Sleet, which is coded wrong).

[pharaohs.odyssey]

Heres My Beamer build

Blaster - Beam Rifle - Temporal Manipulation.mxd

[Clave Dark 5]

I keep meaning to take a look at this from home (where I have Mids) but this has been a busy week!  I went with Beam/Rad for theme (it's a long story), but I'm always on the look-out for another.