honoroitisfantastic POLL: Blaster - best of AT

[Zect]

Reading this post reminds me of the fact that I have received some PM's asking me "what's the best/most meta X" (usually couched in "what would you play if..." language).

 

I've started refraining from replying to them because I think it's unhelpful to do so. I want to help people learn to think for themselves, not do their thinking for them or foist my preferences and biases on them. If I answer, how do they know I'm telling the truth? (It's a PM, so it's not like someone else will come and contradict me.) How do they know my knowledge is accurate or up to date?

 

One even, I kid you not, calls me a "genius". I am extremely uncomfortable with this fawning tone. There's a reason I post from a throwaway account and abstain from avatars and signatures and all that stuff forumites use to build a brand around themselves. I am happiest if you consider me an anonymous nobody. I reject all assumed authority and want you to evaluate anything I write solely on its own merits - as you should do with anything on the forums regardless of the poster's "reputation" or clout.

 

But perhaps this thread can be helpful to such posters. If I receive any inquiries on what's the most meta blaster, I'll be sure to redirect them here.

[pawstruck]

On 9/3/2023 at 8:00 PM, Zect said:

Reading this post reminds me of the fact that I have received some PM's asking me "what's the best/most meta X" (usually couched in "what would you play if..." language).

 

I've started refraining from replying to them because I think it's unhelpful to do so. I want to help people learn to think for themselves, not do their thinking for them or foist my preferences and biases on them. If I answer, how do they know I'm telling the truth? (It's a PM, so it's not like someone else will come and contradict me.) How do they know my knowledge is accurate or up to date?

 

One even, I kid you not, calls me a "genius". I am extremely uncomfortable with this fawning tone. There's a reason I post from a throwaway account and abstain from avatars and signatures and all that stuff forumites use to build a brand around themselves. I am happiest if you consider me an anonymous nobody. I reject all assumed authority and want you to evaluate anything I write solely on its own merits - as you should do with anything on the forums regardless of the poster's "reputation" or clout.

 

But perhaps this thread can be helpful to such posters. If I receive any inquiries on what's the most meta blaster, I'll be sure to redirect them here.

 

I don't understand the angst, except for the fawning, which does seem a little annoying.

 

Part of the fun of any RPG is optimization. We like to geek out over numbers and effectiveness sometimes. I personally use this game as a glorified character creator, but occasionally I like to know what works better or worse, too. (You just posted in my thread, Zect, and it was fun.)

 

E.g., I myself would like to hear more about whether others think AR is good now, because it's difficult to evaluate changes from a distance. I have a family and very little time to play. I won't be tinkering with Mids or farming inf for hours... so it's interesting to me to see rankings/meta/etc., especially as updates come out. (I'll still happily make a Sonic/Dev blaster if I get a good concept though.)

 

Actually, the "play what you like" line is pretty facile, itself. Not saying you're using it, but some players throw it around like "YOLO" or "tolerance" or whatever other platitudinous tropes humanity can come up with when people don't want to think.

 

/e shrug

Edited September 6, 2023 by pawstruck

[honoroit]

mid level report on fire/mental

 

Figs lvl 28

 

Figs - who is mildly imbalanced

 

positioning for everything is improved by combat tp, night and day versus running about for cones:

 

/bind ` powexec_location target combat teleport

 

/bind shift+` powexec_location 180:30 combat teleport

 

- fire damage is, as always, ludicrously good. blazing bolt, blaze, fire blast under hasten are st

- fire breath does amazing damage across its ticks

 

- mind probe is super quick and hits hard (this over subdual). will definately take the final melee.

- 🔮 psychic scream 😱 hits wide and hard, good for winter set proc that adds an Immobilize. 

- between psychic scream, fireball, rain of fire and fire breath available a lot, and supplemented with inferno (and psychic shockwave to come in a few levels)... aoe of this pairing is exceptional.

 

- drain psyche works best because of combat tp. ` -> youre positioned, shift+` -> your now at a spot to fire a cone at the target you ported to.

 

Edited September 7, 2023 by honoroit

[Nostromo21]

What are the most played/popular ATs (and powersets to a lesser extent) online overall? Would the HC guys have that info I assume...?

[Cyclone Jack]

Not sure about meta, but I had over 2500 hrs on my Ice/Ice/Elec when CoH shut down.  Something about that combination just clicked with me, and no matter how many other characters I made, I kept going back to that Blaster.  It was solid damage and had solid cc, especially with the massive amount of +Recharge I squeezed into the build (~185% or so; I know that Chilblain recharged faster than its cast animation, and BIB, FRay, FTouch were all like a 3s recharge.  I think even Hasten had like a 5s overlap 🤣).  For Homecoming, I did remake the character but, I have purposefully retired the character so that I can spend time enjoying new characters, since I don't have anywhere close to the same amount of free time as I had back then. 😄

 

As far as other Blasters, Water/Dark has been quite interesting, Seismic/Earth is a lot of fun (lots of KD), and DP/MA is a surprisingly fun combo as well.

[ZooBaDoo]

I don't usually post but I have a few:

Seismic/Tactical Arrow/Mace You get lots of recharge for seismic points,, tons of AoEs, and a lot of range. (Current favorite)

Fire/Atomic/Fire Hit them, let them close, use radioactive cloud and then inferno. Lots of damage and some control powers.

Beam rifle/Devices/Mace Best single target while debuffing them.

Ice/Ice/Mace lots of control and freezes

Water/Tactical Arrow and Time/Fire The extra recharge is good for getting tidal points.

[Snarky]

I love Dark.  I main a Dark Dark Blaster. Dark ancillary is so bad I use Soul.  Which also has issues as the cone has white tentacles so i do not use.  Theme baby theme

 

having said the, the poll is unnecessary 

 

Fire Fire Fire 🔥 🔥 🔥 is the only choice for the “best” Blaster.  DPS wins.  

[Without_Pause]

On 1/19/2024 at 12:55 AM, Nostromo21 said:

What are the most played/popular ATs (and powersets to a lesser extent) online overall? Would the HC guys have that info I assume...?

Horribly late but no one answered. You need to factor in why this is true, but Brutes were the widely most played AT due to farms. That might be different in this day and age with Tanker AoEs being reworked. Fire/kin Controllers were also insanely popular for likely the same reasons. Emp, I believe, was the run away winner for Defs with Kin being high as well. My guess is people still do the whole, "We need a healer" thing because that happened last night on a team with already having a person with Pain. I do feel like much of popularity of sets were due to more about the meta of things versus how good a set is. 

 

Source, there was a thread from 2020, I believe, which broken down the data in great details in terms of powersets as well. Despite repeated responses to update said data, there never has been any further update. The thread had been pinned at the top of the General forum, IIRC, but had been unpinned when it essentially became a place for people to ask for an update.

[honoroit]

it's a real pain to make a poll with that many things 🙂

 

First, fire is just raw and heat beam insta snipe inferno boom boom madness.

 

These days, I've been keen on water blast, electric blast, and have been itching to do another beam rifle. 

 

Despite no snipe, water is decent.

 

Electric has the pbaoe, and it executes faster than rain of fire or the other ticking ones.

 

I don't think I'm doing Tesla cage wrong, it's just not good (terrible alone aside the hold), and the splash shock setup proc doesn't really do damage worth noting and drags you into micro to get the mechanic to go at all.

 

I remember beam rifle hitting hard single target like, but it's been a bit.

 

Secondary, I'm enjoying energy blast for range boost and punchy but quick enough melee attacks.

Edited September 28, 2024 by honoroit

[MoonSheep]

the joy of fire is the beautifully quick animation times. it makes playing anything else feel clunky

[High_Beam]

Yeah, for me I had to throw out most effective because is alters the output of the first two.  Meta and best play comes from enjoyment.  I get it, Fire is damage king (most effective) but I get little to no enjoyment from it, so little that I deleted it and made a fire Sentinel instead.

Edited September 29, 2024 by High_Beam

[Ukase]

On 9/3/2023 at 7:00 PM, Zect said:

I am happiest if you consider me an anonymous nobody.

If it helps, I've never heard of you, and I'm on the forums quite a bit. But then again, I rarely look at names. or post counts. just the content of the post. 

[Ukase]

Meta. What a stupid word to describe what is essentially more players preferred powerset choices. I mean, it's really a stupid word. It's so over-used and incorrectly used, it doesn't really have any accurate meaning. Kind of like meme. Those darn M words. 

What is the "best"? Subjective. 
What is most popular? While one of the GMs or devs could data mine and report which is most often chosen, what's not clear is if some of those selections were played for any duration, or just made and parked. It's not clear how much fun a given player is having with their choices. 

Ultimately, what's "meta" is meaningless. Because what's "meta" for one task may not be "meta" for another. 

Folks talk about "S-Class", and give these ATs rankings. It's enough to get a rise of bile in the back of my throat. 

This game is made up of a combination of Rock, paper and scissors, if I'm going to use an analogy. 

In some cases, you want an ice/cold corr, not an ice/fire blaster. In some cases, you may want a fire/fire blaster and not a dark/natty corr.  In some cases, a Dark would be better. In some cases, maybe a kheldian is your best bet. There is no one best answer. Sorry - there's not. There are some ATs that are going to shine in a lot of circumstances, built properly, and played by someone with an IQ over 120. There are some that might require more ingenuity and experience to shine. Only a very few are so poor that they need a genius to shine. 

The problem is when you have 8 shiny lights, none of them really stand out. 

People are shy of time and as a result, they want the most dps with the most survivable combinations. I get it - but we need to stop trying to label what those are, and let folks figure out which of the hundreds of potential combos will work for them in a pleasing way. 

In some cases, the dps of fire is called for. In others, the mitigation of ice or water would be a smarter choice. 
For some folks, the natural transition to melee of a rad/mental blaster may not be OP, but might be more fun. And shouldn't fun be your metric? 

Enough with rankings! We have 1000 slots, make them all!

 

Edited September 29, 2024 by Ukase

[Snarky]

3 hours ago, Ukase said:

Meta. What a stupid word to describe what is essentially more players preferred powerset choices. I mean, it's really a stupid word. It's so over-used and incorrectly used, it doesn't really have any accurate meaning. Kind of like meme. Those darn M words. 

What is the "best"? Subjective. 
What is most popular? While one of the GMs or devs could data mine and report which is most often chosen, what's not clear is if some of those selections were played for any duration, or just made and parked. It's not clear how much fun a given player is having with their choices. 

Ultimately, what's "meta" is meaningless. Because what's "meta" for one task may not be "meta" for another. 

Folks talk about "S-Class", and give these ATs rankings. It's enough to get a rise of bile in the back of my throat. 

This game is made up of a combination of Rock, paper and scissors, if I'm going to use an analogy. 

In some cases, you want an ice/cold corr, not an ice/fire blaster. In some cases, you may want a fire/fire blaster and not a dark/natty corr.  In some cases, a Dark would be better. In some cases, maybe a kheldian is your best bet. There is no one best answer. Sorry - there's not. There are some ATs that are going to shine in a lot of circumstances, built properly, and played by someone with an IQ over 120. There are some that might require more ingenuity and experience to shine. Only a very few are so poor that they need a genius to shine. 

The problem is when you have 8 shiny lights, none of them really stand out. 

People are shy of time and as a result, they want the most dps with the most survivable combinations. I get it - but we need to stop trying to label what those are, and let folks figure out which of the hundreds of potential combos will work for them in a pleasing way. 

In some cases, the dps of fire is called for. In others, the mitigation of ice or water would be a smarter choice. 
For some folks, the natural transition to melee of a rad/mental blaster may not be OP, but might be more fun. And shouldn't fun be your metric? 

Enough with rankings! We have 1000 slots, make them all!

 

You donrealize that your post about Meta is….Meta…?

[Seed22]

20 hours ago, Ukase said:

Meta. What a stupid word to describe what is essentially more players preferred powerset choices. I mean, it's really a stupid word. It's so over-used and incorrectly used, it doesn't really have any accurate meaning. Kind of like meme. Those darn M words. 

What is the "best"? Subjective. 
What is most popular? While one of the GMs or devs could data mine and report which is most often chosen, what's not clear is if some of those selections were played for any duration, or just made and parked. It's not clear how much fun a given player is having with their choices. 

Ultimately, what's "meta" is meaningless. Because what's "meta" for one task may not be "meta" for another. 

Folks talk about "S-Class", and give these ATs rankings. It's enough to get a rise of bile in the back of my throat. 

This game is made up of a combination of Rock, paper and scissors, if I'm going to use an analogy. 

In some cases, you want an ice/cold corr, not an ice/fire blaster. In some cases, you may want a fire/fire blaster and not a dark/natty corr.  In some cases, a Dark would be better. In some cases, maybe a kheldian is your best bet. There is no one best answer. Sorry - there's not. There are some ATs that are going to shine in a lot of circumstances, built properly, and played by someone with an IQ over 120. There are some that might require more ingenuity and experience to shine. Only a very few are so poor that they need a genius to shine. 

The problem is when you have 8 shiny lights, none of them really stand out. 

People are shy of time and as a result, they want the most dps with the most survivable combinations. I get it - but we need to stop trying to label what those are, and let folks figure out which of the hundreds of potential combos will work for them in a pleasing way. 

In some cases, the dps of fire is called for. In others, the mitigation of ice or water would be a smarter choice. 
For some folks, the natural transition to melee of a rad/mental blaster may not be OP, but might be more fun. And shouldn't fun be your metric? 

Enough with rankings! We have 1000 slots, make them all!

 

And thats fine. Look I don’t make the rules I just understand them. Fire^3 is the objective, not subjective, best in offensive power for a blaster by its’ nature. 
 

Being that the blaster’s role is damage no matter how many pedantic metrics we add to try and alleviate the above point, it makes it the best blaster pick or “meta” pick. 
 

It may not be liked, it may not even be accepted, but to deny Fire^3 as the objective best damage combo for blaster is like saying the sun doesn’t exist. Sure you could say that but it’d be insane.

[Ukase]

4 minutes ago, Seed22 said:

And thats fine. Look I don’t make the rules I just understand them. Fire^3 is the objective, not subjective, best in offensive power for a blaster by its’ nature. 
 

Being that the blaster’s role is damage no matter how many pedantic metrics we add to try and alleviate the above point, it makes it the best blaster pick or “meta” pick. 
 

It may not be liked, it may not even be accepted, but to deny Fire^3 as the objective best damage combo for blaster is like saying the sun doesn’t exist. Sure you could say that but it’d be insane.

I'm not at all saying Fire isn't awesome. It is. But, having played thousands of hours of fire and ice, I promise you, the mitigation from having a hold (freeze ray) that has a 1 second activation time trumps the very minor damage advantage fire has. We cannot just look at damage. We have to look at survivability. The ability to get through missions, quickly, efficiently. And while fire is capable, it lacks mitigation, unlike ice and water. We cannot just say "Fire is objectively best" without taking into account a character's ability to handle the various challenges on standard game play. Ice>Fire. Water>Fire. 

Fire is great. But it is NOT the objective best because we cannot assess a character's ability solely on dpa or dps. There are other metrics to be considered, such as survivability. And sorry, the mitigation potential of water and ice primaries outclass the fire primary, making fire great, but not best. Remember, skill levels of players come into play, too. We can't judge these based solely on numbers. Performance matters. 

So, I dispute this insanity claim. My claim says to think for a moment fire is best is discounting things like KB and holds as a very real lever to surpass dps. 

Opinions are going to vary. Mine says ice and water are better than fire. 

[Maelwys]

7 minutes ago, Ukase said:

We cannot just say "Fire is objectively best" 
...
Opinions are going to vary. Mine says ice and water are better than fire. 

Notably; apart than Fireball the AoE DPA from range of Fire Blast isn't wonderful.
Inferno requires you to have enough nearby foes to cuddle; but Electric Blast and Water Blast can lay the smackdown from half a map away.

I love my suicidal jousting Fire Blaster as much as the next lunatic, but they're definitely not the be-all-and-end-all.

[Nostromo21]

On 9/30/2024 at 4:20 AM, Snarky said:

You donrealize that your post about Meta is….Meta…?

 

I feel the same way about some other common mmo terms, such as 'proc', which just doesn't really describe what it's trying to ('trig' would be better, eh). There are others.

 

For me, a mostly PvE solo carebear, I'd always rather know what AT/power combos are going to be the most fun for me and my play style. Not that I have any style, ahem. I do have rampant alt-o-holism, so of all the combos I've tried, the ones that have blown me away, not in any order, would be:

- Ill/Dark troller

- Necro/Dark MM

- Dark/Ninja blaster

- Fortunata

- Peacebringer

- Plant/Thorns Dom

- anything Marine recently heh (Water Def was awesome)

- any tanker if you have a face to roll 🙂

[Snarky]

On 9/30/2024 at 4:42 AM, Ukase said:

I'm not at all saying Fire isn't awesome. It is. But, having played thousands of hours of fire and ice, I promise you, the mitigation from having a hold (freeze ray) that has a 1 second activation time trumps the very minor damage advantage fire has. We cannot just look at damage. We have to look at survivability. The ability to get through missions, quickly, efficiently. And while fire is capable, it lacks mitigation, unlike ice and water. We cannot just say "Fire is objectively best" without taking into account a character's ability to handle the various challenges on standard game play. Ice>Fire. Water>Fire. 

Fire is great. But it is NOT the objective best because we cannot assess a character's ability solely on dpa or dps. There are other metrics to be considered, such as survivability. And sorry, the mitigation potential of water and ice primaries outclass the fire primary, making fire great, but not best. Remember, skill levels of players come into play, too. We can't judge these based solely on numbers. Performance matters. 

So, I dispute this insanity claim. My claim says to think for a moment fire is best is discounting things like KB and holds as a very real lever to surpass dps. 

Opinions are going to vary. Mine says ice and water are better than fire. 

fire > ice

[Frostbiter]

I never get a sticker for these. On the plus side this was the first time I've been able to vote for myself.

[Thraxen]

Energy cause it’s fun 

[honoroit]

2 minutes ago, Thraxen said:

Energy cause it’s fun 

Knockback used to get a bad look for a bit, and ya, it can be a drop troublesome if your chasing as melee (and haven't had the sense to get and setup "/bind ` powexec_location target combat teleport").

 

But it's decent control second to second, super fun, and in good hands can set aoes up, while throwing baddies around.

 

Plus, force feedback recharge bonus can get silly good when you've got that running on a handful of powers. 

[Erratic1]

1 hour ago, honoroit said:

Knockback used to get a bad look for a bit, and ya, it can be a drop troublesome if your chasing as melee (and haven't had the sense to get and setup "/bind ` powexec_location target combat teleport").

 

So every melee in the game needs to go get Combat Teleport on the off chance there is an Energy Blast user around who cannot find something else to target?

[honoroit]

55 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

 

So every melee in the game needs to go get Combat Teleport on the off chance there is an Energy Blast user around who cannot find something else to target?

Dunno why you'd not want combat TP on melee (including blap-tastmers)  - and no, that's not build dictate.

 

I just mean, it's so good it's like cheating, there's literally no cast time, you're just there.

 

Edited October 4, 2024 by honoroit

[Thraxen]

I convert the kb to kd in the aoes. I leave it in single target. If I knock it back, I’ll kill it.