Water/ skippable powers?

[Laenan]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm playing as a water/cold and I was wondering if any of the water powers are easily skippable?  I was thinking that the tier 1 blast might be one such power that could be skipped, but I wanted to see what he experts here think.

 

Thanks in advance!

[subbacultchas]

The tier 1 blast is very useful in your chain.

 

The only thing I think is skippable is probably Steam Blast, the cone. Only then because it usually means having to move in or out of combat to get full use from it, and the damage is okay but not spectacular. I would not skip the first couple of single target blasts. I could see Dehydrate being skipped as well, but I use it on my water/cold to top off health quite often.

[Hjarki]

Due to the Tidal Power mechanics, you can't realistically skip either of the two initial powers. Nor can you skip the 'Aim' in the set since it allows you to instantly reach 3 Tidal Power for Geyser.

 

Steam Spray is generally skipped because Cones are almost never very good (and this one isn't an exception). Dehydrate is sometimes skipped. If you're playing a secondary like Cold or Storm that can't self-heal, it can be tempting to take. However, it's not a particularly good attack or a particularly good heal.

[Burnt Toast]

I concur with skipping Steam Spray and Dehydrate. Neither power is all that good and have issues. The only reason I would take Dehydrate is if I needed to slot some more Thunderstrikes for the Ranged Defense bonuses...and yes the "heal" is laughably small.

[KelvinKole]

Skip dehydrate and the hydro blast. Hydro blast has a clunky animation that annoys me disrupts and otherwise fluid chain. You can build plenty of tidal power with aqua bolt.

 

Steam spray is one of the best cones in the game. Wide angle and high damage and works awesome with scourge. Take it and love it.

[Bropine]

Regarding dehydrate, I somewhat disagree. I have a secondary powerset without a self-heal (kinetics) and I just took dehydrate last night. It makes it so much easier for me to solo missions now.

[nyamo999]

You will need 3 ST spells to fill out your ST rotation,  assuming your secondary and epic pools dont give you a third ST spell.  This means you can drop up to one of Jet,  bolt,  blast or dehydrate.  You will want jet because it's your hardest hitting ST spell,  and bolt because it's your fastest TP builder.  Choosing between blast and dehydrate,  blast has a knockdown which lets you slot force feedback procs, wont accidentally eat up your TP and activates faster (dpa is about equal).  Dehydrate heals you. I'd say that if you lack self sustain then take dehydrate,  otherwise blast should be better in most circumstances.

 

The only other skippable power is steam spray.  It is a decent cone spell,  but it's still a cone.  I'd argue that water has strong enough ae with burst,  whirpool and geyser.

[subbacultchas]

Regarding dehydrate, I somewhat disagree. I have a secondary powerset without a self-heal (kinetics) and I just took dehydrate last night. It makes it so much easier for me to solo missions now.

This just now sunk in. Is there some criteria as self-heal that Transfusion doesn't cover, besides being close to melee range? IIRC it's better than Dehydrate in a lot of ways, and I'm not sure I'd ever replace it with Dehydrate.

 

If it's just flavor that's fine too, not trying to nit-pick your build.

[honoraryorange]

Steam Spray is generally skipped because Cones are almost never very good (and this one isn't an exception). Dehydrate is sometimes skipped. If you're playing a secondary like Cold or Storm that can't self-heal, it can be tempting to take. However, it's not a particularly good attack or a particularly good heal.

 

Man, I could not disagree more on Steam Spray. I've got Steam Spray with Positron's Blast (it has Range as part of its set), which makes the Cone reach MASSIVE, blanketing entire spawns. It's very satisfying to use and between it and a pumped up Water Burst it can destroy a spawn. The damage per activation on it is really great, and honestly I don't think you can have enough AOEs available to you considering modern gameplay of moving group to group and just wiping things out with little single target work.

[subbacultchas]

Steam Spray is generally skipped because Cones are almost never very good (and this one isn't an exception). Dehydrate is sometimes skipped. If you're playing a secondary like Cold or Storm that can't self-heal, it can be tempting to take. However, it's not a particularly good attack or a particularly good heal.

 

Man, I could not disagree more on Steam Spray. I've got Steam Spray with Positron's Blast (it has Range as part of its set), which makes the Cone reach MASSIVE, blanketing entire spawns. It's very satisfying to use and between it and a pumped up Water Burst it can destroy a spawn. The damage per activation on it is really great, and honestly I don't think you can have enough AOEs available to you considering modern gameplay of moving group to group and just wiping things out with little single target work.

I'm actually fine with Steam Spray too, although I did take the advice of skipping Dehydrate and I couldn't be happier. Steam Spray damage is good, recharge is nice, and it's fairly easy to make it act more like traditional AOE than a cone by jumping. Maybe not every map since some have tighter ceilings, but if you target a middle mob and jump the cone tends to face downward which makes it more like a traditional circular AOE. It would not be among the powers I drop now.