SO only Blaster for SO Team.... HELP!!!

[Snarky]

I am going to be running a Blaster on this team that is doing a crawl to 50.  I volunteered up a Dark Dark (of course)  But I thought that was to about 20.  We going to fiddy.  Sigh. 

 

There are a few trollers, a Fire Fire Blaster, A fender, a tank, and a sentinel, a scrapper and a couple corrs.   We will start out as two teams.  Within a few gaming sessions these thing tend to boil down to 4-7 of us.  That will be the Sentinel, The Fire^2 Blaster, me, the Tank, and a fire/kin Corr.  Hopefully one of the 3 trollers will hang in there and the other corr 50% time.  All on SO only builds.

 

I am seriously looking at that AR rifle traps lol.  Especially since I can now just skip web grenade and take trops.  Put a KD proc in there as a ghetto 'troll and just start blastin'   errr no I/O  F me.

 

But really any of the pure ranged sets are calling me.  Not sure I want to go Ice/Ice.  I love it, but I miss a real nuke.  The AR doesnt have quite a real Nuke but that hybris T9 cone thing is a meat eater. Never played water, i built a Seismic to see it go off and then never played it.  I do like Elec but it gets penalized for being pure ranged and there are no other drainers on the team.  Beam is great on bosses and kind of crappy at room cleaning.  

 

Any thought?  Anything 

 

 

 

[Lyrium]

I have an Elec/Energy blaster and is nuts. Great damage, and the sapping power allows me to act as a semi-controller. Not sure how it would work on SOs only, but it shouldn't be too bad. And having a ranged nuke is great

[twozerofoxtrot]

Did this for a little while with an AR/Traps Corruptor and it worked surprisingly well.

 

On a blaster though... hmm.  I would try Sonic, based on what you're predicting the eventual comp to look like.  You're not going to hurt for raw damage between that Fire² Blaster and Fire/Kin Corr, so I'd aim for more utility.

 

As a secondary, I'd consider /Devices or /Tactical Arrow. Both are ranged friendly (since you can't stack set bonuses), and you're going to have plenty of fire flying around to ignite OSA.

[Sanguinesun]

Frost/Tactical Arrow later with Fire mastery.

[Outrider_01]

On 11/1/2022 at 6:29 PM, Snarky said:

Any thought?  Anything 

Fire/Dark , beacuse;reason Snarky

 

Fire - 3 single targets, a nuke, a range AoE, a cone

Dark - 2 melee, 1 cone melee, an AoE toggle, PBAOE +DMG/tohit, PBAOE Endurance Drain, A range single target +end/rec power.  PBAOE act like mini-nukes.

[High_Beam]

Before Set IOs I found Energy Blasters to be the best pound for pound fun and fight-wise when there is rhythm (I know the number crunchers can prove otherwise because FIRE but fun isn't a number), but everyone hates knockback and that is part of the core mechanic of Energy.  You gotta keep the knockback baby.  Someone in these forums occasionally has a quote along the lines of the best form of mitigation is a dead enemy and that is always how a Blaster should think in my opinion.  Resistance . . . Defense . . . a Blaster craves not these things.  If you move like a pre-IO Blaster needed to do in order to survive, you also learn how to position your cones and steer the enemy with your KB; Energy Torrent herds enemies quite well .

 

I am telling you man, Energy as a primary with the KB not tampered with is awesome fun at range and not super problematic on a team of you are able to maneuver.  Or hover up and blast down making it KD anyway.  Remember KB takes time off the enemy attack clock, and not just their having to get up.  You fling them and the clock is ticking and you can attack.  then they land and go through their reset and stand up cycle and you can attack.  With KD its fall down and they are in their get up cycle so less time for you to shoot them when they aren't shooting.  Also, slamming foes into the geometry, wall sticking and object collision work for you (most of the time); knock a foe into a piece of gear (impaled on an object just like in Commando) and he might go through a constant reset cycle (why cant I pull myself off this pipe in my chest).

 

Of course there are exceptions where you become a PITA member and maybe even a liability (though nowhere near as much as a standard MM with control deficiency).  Hess final battle for one.  Sewer Trial (though sweeping the catwalks for easy gun access . . . hmmm).  And of course the rare time where you blow a dude through the geometry, which from a story standpoint is freaking awesome; I knocked his a$$ into another dimension . . . just like dad always threatened to do to me when I talked back to him . . . but I digress.

 

Now secondary, well that's where it gets tricky because some are Blapperiffic and some are not and you said range was calling you.  My original High Beam on Freedom was Energy/Cold, and this was before all of the Homecoming modifications.  It worked good for her range but when I rebuilt her on HC I went with Mental Manipulation, which I am having to retool slightly because World of Confusion sucks.  But the bottom line for me, from a play standpoint not a power player standpoint, whole lot of fun regardless of the Secondary.  

[Snarky]

I actually went with a Fire/Mental/Force of Will/Soul Mastery build for this.  This gives me 5 (FIVE!) cones of varying damage types.  Then a ranged ball and a bunch of ST ranged....AND a full PBAoE experience with the Fire Nuke, the Mental PBAoE attack, and the PBAoE sustain.  

 

Since this is SO I have Noooooo Defense.  Which is why I was asking about strategies.  I like the toon so much (and crawl teams are once a week...) that I built a second one on I/O, still no defense, and am just having a Blast.

[High_Beam]

Betty Betty Nugs - He says he likes your cones.

[Doomguide2005]

On 11/7/2022 at 6:39 PM, Snarky said:

I actually went with a Fire/Mental/Force of Will/Soul Mastery build for this.  This gives me 5 (FIVE!) cones of varying damage types.  Then a ranged ball and a bunch of ST ranged....AND a full PBAoE experience with the Fire Nuke, the Mental PBAoE attack, and the PBAoE sustain.  

 

Since this is SO I have Noooooo Defense.  Which is why I was asking about strategies.  I like the toon so much (and crawl teams are once a week...) that I built a second one on I/O, still no defense, and am just having a Blast.

     Do you have both Psychic Shockwave and Drain Psyche (hint I would strongly recommend both)?  Despite the descriptive text (Close AoE) Psychic Shockwave is a PBAoE attack.  (Re)Reading I'm inclined to say yes the sustain you mention is Drain Psyche despite the fact it predates Blasters getting sustains as a whole.  In any case it's a very powerful Regeneration and Recovery buff and debuff.  For a non-support AT it is a very potent regeneration debuff and not to shabby even on a support character.  Combined with an Epic resist Shield you'll be very hard to defeat while it's buffing you.  Add in the presence of a Tanker and the Kin drawing aggro as well should make survival even against higher notoriety setting very solid.  I'd be trying to follow the Tanker in (side by side with the Kin). Tanker gets aggro, Kin uses FS while you Drain Psyche then unleash.  If you have or plan to get Unleash Potential I'd be trying to cycle between the two.  The rough part will be when they're both on cooldown which unfortunately on SO only build will be a significant period as both have relatively long cool downs.  That's when I'd be using those cones when the other two are on cool down.

[Snarky]

9 minutes ago, Doomguide2005 said:

     Do you have both Psychic Shockwave and Drain Psyche (hint I would strongly recommend both)?  Despite the descriptive text (Close AoE) Psychic Shockwave is a PBAoE attack.  (Re)Reading I'm inclined to say yes the sustain you mention is Drain Psyche despite the fact it predates Blasters getting sustains as a whole.  In any case it's a very powerful Regeneration and Recovery buff and debuff.  For a non-support AT it is a very potent regeneration debuff and not to shabby even on a support character.  Combined with an Epic resist Shield you'll be very hard to defeat while it's buffing you.  Add in the presence of a Tanker and the Kin drawing aggro as well should make survival even against higher notoriety setting very solid.  I'd be trying to follow the Tanker in (side by side with the Kin). Tanker gets aggro, Kin uses FS while you Drain Psyche then unleash.  If you have or plan to get Unleash Potential I'd be trying to cycle between the two.  The rough part will be when they're both on cooldown which unfortunately on SO only build will be a significant period as both have relatively long cool downs.  That's when I'd be using those cones when the other two are on cool down.

Yes i have both. As much AoE as possible.  I do call Drain Psyche the sustain.  It fills that role.  I have face planted a couple times.  Right now the group is 10-11 people so an awkward team split of 5-6 people per team.  And I have been called out for “tanking” a group if I get bored.   Honestly I sort of do not realize I do it.  I just see a group of enemies and wade into them with  AoE and usually they are dead.  Sometimes it is not so pretty lol

Edited December 13, 2022 by Snarky

[Doomguide2005]

Yeah it is definitely a sustain and a pretty strong one at that I just missed it in the first read through as it's existed for long time prior to when they gave all blasters some sort of sustain and my brain didn't draw the connection at first.  Mine was a Sonic/MM blaster on Virtue a long time ago.  I'd try to use the Sleep then move in to use Drain Psyche. And that was many Issues before Sunset.  I'd never seen or heard of a "sustain" prior to HC.  It made thinking about tackling higher level AVs solo on a Blaster a much more doable thing as there was about zero ways on a Blaster to get a triple digit regen debuff.  Unless endurance is an issue I'd probably favor buffing my regeneration.  Hell I'm greedy I'd be looking to hit ED territory on both regeneration and recovery.