Sonic/Martial - Blapper Focus, fun?

[Latex]

I've not played Blaster in a long time and it seems to be the only Archetype with access to Sonic and Martial Arts in some form. Dominator seemed close but the /Martial relies too heavily on Ranged Shiruken style attacks.

I'd like to focus on the Martial side of the character, with Sonic being a sort of secondary, that's going to mean Blapper focus. In high-tier content is a Sonic/Martial Blaster going to be able to have the defences, resilience and damage to keep pace?

[EnjoyTheJourney]

You can make a sturdy blaster with sonic / martial as the primary / secondary. Blaster damage is good, so damage shouldn't be a problem. 

 

Some thoughts follow ...

 

If you take inner will, rune of protection from the sorcery pool, and melee core hybrid incarnate, your blapper has good mez protection overall. That way you free up the destiny slot for a T4 barrier, which helps toughness. Musculature core can work just fine for the alpha. 

 

For powers, consider taking 4 from sonic (scream, amplify, screech, dreadful wail) and 8 from martial (all except throw sand). Sorcery (mystic flight, spirit ward, rune of protection), fighting (boxing or kick, tough, weave), leadership (maneuvers, tactics, perhaps vengeance), and speed (hasten) pools. That gives you 5 single target powers, so you'll always have a single target kick or sonic attack available. For AOE you get the nuke, a usual PbAOE in the secondary, and a third AOE in burst of speed, if procc'd out (which you can use 3 times rapidly in a row to spam damage). 

For epic pool, you can go fire for some combination of bonfire / char / fire shield, for mace and high smash / lethal defense by taking just the armor, or for soul for dark embrace / oppressive gloom combination. Force mastery has some attractive power choices, as well. 

GL with your blapper, however you decide to move forward.

 

Edited October 22, 2023 by EnjoyTheJourney

[EnjoyTheJourney]

I had a bit of time, so here is a sample build below ...

 

It has some sturdiness, although that aspect of the build could be tightened up if that was desired. Resistance to recharge / movement debuffs is decent at 50%, though, and mez protection is in good shape with 3 powers providing it. All three powers providing mez protection (inner will, rune of protection, melee core hybrid incarnate) function as break frees. Incidentally, the recharge bonus from reaction time is quite noticeable and it doesn't show up in Mids "global recharge" total. I've found that mobs affected by reaction time and trying to target your blaster tend to move slower than other mobs around them as they look toward your blaster, which helps for spotting them soon enough to reposition. That helps for safety. 

 

Damage is pretty good, overall, and was the main emphasis in putting together the build. You could take siren's song to make this a better build for soloing. There are quite a few reasonable variations on this "foundation" for a sonic / martial blapper build.  

Once again, good luck with your blapper, should you decide to make one.

 

 

 

Blaster (Sonic Attack - Martial Combat - Flame Mastery).mbd

Blaster Sonic Martial Flame.pdf

Edited October 22, 2023 by EnjoyTheJourney

[kelika2]

I am going to say no since Sonic Blast is very cone based and switching between melee and ranged will eat away at me over time.

And stacking -resist to significant levels will take time which you wont have in groups or x0 solo

[Latex]

9 hours ago, EnjoyTheJourney said:

I had a bit of time, so here is a sample build below ...

 

It has some sturdiness, although that aspect of the build could be tightened up if that was desired. Resistance to recharge / movement debuffs is decent at 50%, though, and mez protection is in good shape with 3 powers providing it. All three powers providing mez protection (inner will, rune of protection, melee core hybrid incarnate) function as break frees. Incidentally, the recharge bonus from reaction time is quite noticeable and it doesn't show up in Mids "global recharge" total. I've found that mobs affected by reaction time and trying to target your blaster tend to move slower than other mobs around them as they look toward your blaster, which helps for spotting them soon enough to reposition. That helps for safety. 

 

Damage is pretty good, overall, and was the main emphasis in putting together the build. You could take siren's song to make this a better build for soloing. There are quite a few reasonable variations on this "foundation" for a sonic / martial blapper build.  

Once again, good luck with your blapper, should you decide to make one.

 

 

 

Blaster (Sonic Attack - Martial Combat - Flame Mastery).mbd 44.21 kB · 2 downloads

Blaster Sonic Martial Flame.pdf 105.53 kB · 1 download

This is great, gives me a foundation to build off!

Would there be any decent replacements for the Sorcery Pool? I've got a feeling Rune of Protection is one of a kind and important to the build.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

For the martial secondary there really isn't a solid replacement for rune of protection from the sorcery pool to help with managing mez. It's your "go to" power to manage mez when inner will is recharging. Thankfully, the sorcery pool has relatively good other powers you can take to gain access to rune of protection.

 

Mystic flight takes the unique winter's gift IO that increases resistance to recharge / movement debuffs and it has a teleport power with it. It's also a way to hover just above combat while being able to fight in melee with, say, Lord Recluse in an MLTF. Much safer to melee from the sky sometimes because if you position right then your blapper won't get hit with PbAOEs or cone attacks. It's actually pretty cool to deliver those single target martial kicks from the air because the animations are pretty good and if you're above the fray then you can actually see them. 

 

Spirit ward is a good way to make the team's tank stronger. If you're getting speed boost from a kin, which is not that unusual, then you won't need to worry about endurance at all and you can just go ahead and run it full time. If there's no speed boost, though, you'll need to be more careful about end, but you can still pick times when it will be quite helpful. 

Incidentally, a procc'd up burst of speed can hit quite hard if you rapidly cast it three times in a row.  It's an unusual power and it's easy to forget about it because nuking is not its usual function, nor does the spell description emphasize that you should think about it as a damaging AOE. Definitely a good power to remember, though, as it helps noticeably for clearing mobs. 

Edited October 22, 2023 by EnjoyTheJourney

[Zepp]

13 TS-97631.mbd

This is the build I use. I found it fun to play, and the Burst of Speed as nuke is especially useful at early levels. The Status Protections from set bonuses keeps me pretty safe, I haven't found major issues with Mez. I like Ki Push, and it is insanely funny, but it doesn't work well if you minimize your ranged attacks.

You may have noticed that I went for Stun-stacking in this build. If you start with your nuke with Oppressive Gloom you walk into most encounters with most of the enemy stunned. The additional stun from Screech and the KD from the kicks makes this a fairly safe build. I mainly soloed with it, but it works well enough in groups as well.

[Latex]

Been a little while, I've began to learn how to build better characters, appreciate all the help but I've scoped in on the character concept much more. Avoided Status protection due to Acrobatics, Superior Defiant Barrage, Inner Will and high ranged DEF, I usually play Corruptors who are much easier to build because they Hover, very very rarely do I get knocked back, held, slept, or otherwise despite not having things like Inner Will on them.

+ Avoided Sorcery themed Powers and Flight
+ 'Science Speedster' theme and feel
+ Leant toward making the character Tanky(ish)
+ Balanced choice of Ranged and Melee

- Extremely low +Rech
- Not Melee or AOE DEF Softcapped
- It's Sonic, mods needed to make the SFX tolerable
- Lack of Procs
- Expensive
- AOE Attacks that aren't S/L are going to obliterate you


Am I missing something? Any tricks to fill the gaps in melee defense, or gain more +Rech while retaining at least Ranged DEF softcap?
Also, not sure on whether to go Agility Core Paragon or Musculature.
 

Blapper (Sonic Attack - Martial Combat.1.3).mbd

Edited January 19 by Latex