honoroitisfantastic POLL: Blaster - best of AT

[Lusiphur Malache]

Took a look at all the blasters that I have active (6) and the failures that didn't work for me that i could remember. The winner buy a narrow margin was Dark over Ice and NRG.  Mostly because of secondaries, -to hit lets me help teammates more then slow and kd.

 

I love Ki Push, it is so much fun, but when you add in Dragon Kick, Burst of Speed, and Reaction Time, Martial is my favorite secondary over Ice, Sonic, and Time.

 

When it comes to Epics/Patron pools Dark or Soul is going to get my first look.  Theme might get me to look at something else, but in the end Soul is my pick for favorite Epic/Patron pool.  Get a resist armor to Smash, Lethal, Negative, and Toxic.  Oppressive Gloom is a good 'oh shit' power, and Soul Storm is one of the coolest looking powers in the game.

[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. 

would this hold true for Corruptors?

 

as i am looking for a new Corruptor i am settling into Dark as the secondary.  It is the best fit for my playstyle and personality.  the heal is a benefit to me, and the rez is just a debuff in disguise and i do not need to help anyone.

 

so that leaves the attack set.  Fire is good, but then i am in the melee.  with ice (or water) i could stand off.  helped even more by Dark epic's ranged spirit drain.  ( that does buff the rain pseudo pets?  right?)

[Triumphant]

I like energy blast for knockback effects and energy manipulation because I hate endurance issues and energize solves this problem for me and the powerful melee attacks make blapping with combat teleport really fun.  For epic pools, force mastery lets me take personal force field, which makes me feel impenetrable, like Magneto or Kang when they activate their forcefields.

 

There's a ton of blaster sets I haven't tried yet, so I'm sure there are plenty more that I would wind up loving.

[Ukase]

5 hours ago, Snarky said:

would this hold true for Corruptors?

I think it would be mixed results, depending on the corruptor secondary. 

I absolutely love the fire/natty and ice/cold combos for corruptors. The damage boost from overgrowth, in conjunction with the debuffs make the damage seem better. 

Anecdotally, I can tell you the mistake I made with my fire/dark and ice/dark corruptors is I didn't plan for enough end reduction and/or end recovery. Incarnates made a solution, but no build should rely on incarnates, because when you exemp, you're a bit gimped. I hate using short term solutions like inspirations or temp powers for long term problems. I need to at worst respec mine, or at best, use some unslotters in some clever fashion. 

I think you'll be fine with your dark style whichever way you choose. There is one thing about fire that I like more than ice, and that's the sound fx and the snipe. Ice doesn't have one which has always been a big downer for me. And there's something pretty awesome about the sound of fire. The ice "whistle" is okay, but the fire sound is more than cool to me. 

Water, to me, has to be cleverly planned out, ensuring a smooth attack chain. Ice and fire seem to have that no matter what I do, but I have to be more deliberate with water. I usually plan for more recharge in water builds to make the proc attacks available more often, as well as the rest of them. Candidly, if it weren't for the procs, and the bouncy nature of the attacks, not sure I'd even play water. But that's just me. 

[Hjarki]

23 hours ago, Snarky said:

would this hold true for Corruptors?

One of the issues faced by Corruptors is that Scourge is largely of use against very tough single targets (AV/GM). On anything else, it's either overkill or doesn't activate.

 

Consider the ultimates. Our prototypical Blaster is going to throw that ultimate at the +damage cap (due to Aim/Build Up/Gaussian's) with a base damage scale of 1.125. Our Corruptor? Unless they're Kinetics, they're probably not at the +damage cap. It's a bit risky - especially with PBAoE - for them to lay in AE -resist debuffs (if they even have them). Since they're attacking an undamaged spawn, they're not getting Scourge. This means that while our Blaster is doing 5.625x normalized damage, our Corruptor is probably doing at more like 2.625x normalized damage. At this point, you might as well just be playing a Defender.

 

However, Blizzard is different. You can launch it at range and then lay in a -resist debuff. Moreover, Blizzard might not Scourge on the early ticks, but it Scourges on the later ones. As a result, a Corruptor's Blizzard is dramatically stronger than a Corruptor's Inferno - as well as being far safer to use.

 

Even on Blasters, Ice is often a better choice than Fire in terms of raw damage. You get a free purple proc from Unbreakable Constraint, you don't need to be worried about hitting +24 hit bonus for a Sniper attack and it has two very strong attacks that mesh well with the melee possibilities from secondary. So while Fire/Fire might be popular, it's arguably less potent than Ice/Fire.

 

[Octogoat]

My most successful blaster was an archery/tac and I tried everything 

[Nostromo21]

On 10/13/2024 at 6:29 PM, Octogoat said:

My most successful blaster was an archery/tac and I tried everything 

 

My least squishy blaster I've ever tried is a dark/ninja. And I only use maybe 3 ninja powers.

Back on live I got my ice/fire blapper Kelvin Ator to mid 40s through sheer force of will, eh.

[OEM61]

Best?

"Best" is what I like most.  I don't crunch numbers too hard.

Back in the day I had a fire/fire/fire and energy/energy/force blaster.

Now I am working on my fire/fire/fire blaster and considering other options for my energy blaster, so best?

Fire across the board.  For now.

[Ringo]

On 10/12/2024 at 1:21 PM, Hjarki said:

One of the issues faced by Corruptors is that Scourge is largely of use against very tough single targets (AV/GM). On anything else, it's either overkill or doesn't activate.

 

Consider the ultimates. Our prototypical Blaster is going to throw that ultimate at the +damage cap (due to Aim/Build Up/Gaussian's) with a base damage scale of 1.125. Our Corruptor? Unless they're Kinetics, they're probably not at the +damage cap. It's a bit risky - especially with PBAoE - for them to lay in AE -resist debuffs (if they even have them). Since they're attacking an undamaged spawn, they're not getting Scourge. This means that while our Blaster is doing 5.625x normalized damage, our Corruptor is probably doing at more like 2.625x normalized damage. At this point, you might as well just be playing a Defender.

 

However, Blizzard is different. You can launch it at range and then lay in a -resist debuff. Moreover, Blizzard might not Scourge on the early ticks, but it Scourges on the later ones. As a result, a Corruptor's Blizzard is dramatically stronger than a Corruptor's Inferno - as well as being far safer to use.

 

Even on Blasters, Ice is often a better choice than Fire in terms of raw damage. You get a free purple proc from Unbreakable Constraint, you don't need to be worried about hitting +24 hit bonus for a Sniper attack and it has two very strong attacks that mesh well with the melee possibilities from secondary. So while Fire/Fire might be popular, it's arguably less potent than Ice/Fire.

 

If you are talking about a Fire Corr going for max damage you probably should be /Kin

 

Ice Corrs can absolutely throw down tho