Assault Rilfe / Tactical Arrow / Force Mastery - Want feedback after a lot of itterations

[SenTheFortress]

I'll link my original post about this combination in case you want the full background/previous variants: 

 

The important bit is the last comment I made: 

•  

"After lots of experimentation, I came up with this build.

 

Dropping a few attacks and switched to Force Mastery (this has a much better res power and two convenient mules within the pool and still works for flavor as these can be tech related).

 

Adding another toggle means more END consumption, so I tried to ease Temp Invul in by slotting for a little more END. If it's still end hungry I have the option to drop a proc or two from Flamethrower or Glue Arrow to pick up some END set bonuses or further reduce Temp Invul's end drain. 

 

Might be too end hungry with EM and TI active, but we'll see with testing. 

 

Just wanted to post this here if anyone looks back at this post in the future. "

 

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Just wanted some feedback about this build I reconstructed. It's based on Icesphere's AR/TA/AM from the google drive (posted here). 

 

It's been converted to use Flight over Leaping and taking Force Mastery over Arsenal Mastery. This lets me pick up convenient mules like PFF and FoN. I think it trades a tiny bit of damage output and slightly more END drain, in exchange for better buffers to survive rough situations. Just wanted to see if what I've done is viable, or if someone can point out some improvements to make.  Thanks! 

 

 

ICESPHERE's Blaster (Assault Rifle - Tactical Arrow - Arsenal Mastery)(1).mbd

Scouty - Blaster - AR - TA - FM.mbd

Edited July 26 by SenTheFortress
Small change in Scouty build

[atletikus]

Cooked up the following based on your Icesphere alt for generally better powers while also gaining global recharge and defences. More endurance hungry though, so not sure how that will play out lacking truly high level experience.

Some thoughts:

 

Glue Arrow: Found the proc rate underwhelming personally when I tested it a few years ago (caveat possible recent changes), Blasters generally kill or die too fast to get good use of it . You might want to consider Ice Arrow as a proc "boss killer", the AoE damage potential in Assault Rifle/Tactical Arrows is outstanding.

 

Upshot: You'll want this up as often as possible and available early too.

Flash Arrow: Meh power. Discarded and added its -ToHit benefit in ESD Arrow for a "2-for-1". 

 

Flamethrower: The exclusion is questionable. Great AoE.

 

Flight instead of Jumping: With Evasive Maneuvers, you're fast, agile and can position supremely well - great for any ranged Blaster.

 

Leadership instead of Concealment: More power variety instead of unabashed LotG mule powers.

 

Weave vs Maneuvers: 6-slotting either will give slightly better defenses or endurance drain.

 

Arsenal Mastery: Kept it since it probably fits thematically and is "cheap" slots/endurance-wise. Properly slotted Surveillance will help with hard targets.

 

ICESPHERE's Blaster (Assault Rifle - Tactical Arrow - Arsenal Mastery)_v2.mbd

Edited July 27 by atletikus

[SenTheFortress]

On 7/27/2025 at 1:29 AM, atletikus said:

Cooked up the following based on your Icesphere alt for generally better powers while also gaining global recharge and defences. More endurance hungry though, so not sure how that will play out lacking truly high level experience.

Some thoughts:

 

Glue Arrow: Found the proc rate underwhelming personally when I tested it a few years ago (caveat possible recent changes), Blasters generally kill or die too fast to get good use of it . You might want to consider Ice Arrow as a proc "boss killer", the AoE damage potential in Assault Rifle/Tactical Arrows is outstanding.

 

Upshot: You'll want this up as often as possible and available early too.

Flash Arrow: Meh power. Discarded and added its -ToHit benefit in ESD Arrow for a "2-for-1". 

 

Flamethrower: The exclusion is questionable. Great AoE.

 

Flight instead of Jumping: With Evasive Maneuvers, you're fast, agile and can position supremely well - great for any ranged Blaster.

 

Leadership instead of Concealment: More power variety instead of unabashed LotG mule powers.

 

Weave vs Maneuvers: 6-slotting either will give slightly better defenses or endurance drain.

 

Arsenal Mastery: Kept it since it probably fits thematically and is "cheap" slots/endurance-wise. Properly slotted Surveillance will help with hard targets.

 

ICESPHERE's Blaster (Assault Rifle - Tactical Arrow - Arsenal Mastery)_v2.mbd 45.92 kB · 5 downloads

 

 

Cool build, I do have some questions to ask regarding it. 

 

You said excluding flamethrower is questionable, but I use it it in my build. You don't use it in yours, did you mean Ignite instead? Part of the big discussion on my previous post was Flamethrower is really good and should be used.

 

You say Glue arrow is "meh" but you still include it in your build. Was it intended to have Ice Arrow slot here? I might be inexperienced compared to most, but Glue Arrow has been the absolute best attack in my arsenal, Less kitting, keeps them clumped up for AoE effects for my self and my team. Especially when exemplaring down (which I do very frequently). 

 

Do you think Force Mastery is not worth using? Temp invul is much better than Body Armor if you have end to spare. Personal Forcefield seems like a good "oh shit button", I've heard some of the squisher archetypes like having something like this at times. Is the extra bump for your Team using Leadership and Surveillance worth losing some personal survivability? Or do you think it is more a preference thing? The END drain is pretty similar, so I'm not concerned with that. 

 

Thanks for taking the time, I might try this one out of the test server at some point. 

 

 

 

[atletikus]

As I already mention, I used your attached Icesphere build as the basis for my tinkering, so the power choices apart from Flash Arrow (which is meh) are yours. I would have built it somewhat differently with free hands 🙂

 

Glue Arrow is a good enough power, I just question its use as a damage dealing proc power for a Blaster. I certainly was underwhelmed. I see it more as light control that shines when used in conjunction with Oil Slick Arrow.

 

Quote

Do you think Force Mastery is not worth using? Temp invul is much better than Body Armor if you have end to spare. Personal Forcefield seems like a good "oh shit button", I've heard some of the squisher archetypes like having something like this at times. Is the extra bump for your Team using Leadership and Surveillance worth losing some personal survivability? Or do you think it is more a preference thing? The END drain is pretty similar, so I'm not concerned with that. 

 

I think it's slept upon with Fire and Mace Mastery being very much meta sets, with Arsenal being a bit of a RP-set. Body Armor is buffed to provide resistance towards several other damage types, which makes it a decent choice IMO. I think of Personal Forcefield as more of a LotG mule. Ethereal Shift which can be bought for cheap from the START vendor pretty much fills the role of a purely defensive "oh crap button". Force of Nature is great for those harder combats though.

I tend to prioritize personal survivability when building my Blasters, often aiming for soft-capped ranged defenses. While this sacrifices raw damage potential, staying alive and able to consistently deal damage outweighs the benefit of a glass cannon that frequently faceplant as far as I'm concerned.

Wanted to add a couple of my builds to give you an idea, but that functionality is presently bugged and not working for me.

 

Edited August 1 by atletikus

[Nemu]

There’s only one accepted way to build ar/ta. It’s been scientifically proven.

 

 

[SenTheFortress]

9 hours ago, atletikus said:

As I already mention, I used your attached Icesphere build as the basis for my tinkering, so the power choices apart from Flash Arrow (which is meh) are yours. I would have built it somewhat differently with free hands 🙂

 

Glue Arrow is a good enough power, I just question its use as a damage dealing proc power for a Blaster. I certainly was underwhelmed. I see it more as light control that shines when used in conjunction with Oil Slick Arrow.

 

 

I think it's slept upon with Fire and Mace Mastery being very much meta sets, with Arsenal being a bit of a RP-set. Body Armor is buffed to provide resistance towards several other damage types, which makes it a decent choice IMO. I think of Personal Forcefield as more of a LotG mule. Ethereal Shift which can be bought for cheap from the START vendor pretty much fills the role of a purely defensive "oh crap button". Force of Nature is great for those harder combats though.

I tend to prioritize personal survivability when building my Blasters, often aiming for soft-capped ranged defenses. While this sacrifices raw damage potential, staying alive and able to consistently deal damage outweighs the benefit of a glass cannon that frequently faceplant as far as I'm concerned.

Wanted to add a couple of my builds to give you an idea, but that functionality is presently bugged and not working for me.

 

 

> As I already mention, I used your attached Icesphere build as the basis for my tinkering, so the power choices apart from Flash Arrow (which is meh) are yours.

 

This doesn't make sense, they are Icesphere's choices, not mine. You could have ran as wild as you wanted with it. Throw it away and do something completely different if you want! If you think there is a more viable way to build it, I'm 100% open to it.  My "choices" are just copying other people. I don't know how to build characters with nuance yet (been playing for 3 months).

 

In regards to Arsenal Mastery... Oh, you know what MIDS says Body Armor only gives S/L res, I was undervaluing it for sure over Temp Invul. They have pros and cons, TI isn't just "better" in almost every way. Thanks for pointing that out, I probably never would have noticed. 

 

I'll consider Ethereal shift, thanks for mentioning. 

 

Right on, I try to plan around having at least 32.5% to hit the softcap w/ a small purple when you need it. 

 

I think i'll reconsider using Arsenal Mastery since it's better for flavor. 

 

That "Rambo" build is cool, but I want to fly. Maybe I can borrow ideas from it at least. Thanks for all your help. 

 

 

 

Edited August 1 by SenTheFortress
added some context

[Nemu]

2 hours ago, SenTheFortress said:

That "Rambo" build is cool, but I want to fly. Maybe I can borrow ideas from it at least. Thanks for all your help. 

Do you NEED fly as an actual power pick or can you just buy the temp jet pack powers to fly?

[SenTheFortress]

20 minutes ago, Nemu said:

Do you NEED fly as an actual power pick or can you just buy the temp jet pack powers to fly?

 

It depends, this build does want some mules for LotG, hover and evasive maneuvers from the flight pool help provide this. If you exclude fly, you lose EM, so then you need 2 more powers to slot LotG and idk if the alternatives are all that great. You get 1 extra power, but when I look at a lot of these blaster builds you're working with/only accounting for 1 or 2 slots the Fly power was using. You basically have to start from scratch to account for this (not great for a nooby like me), or pick something that can be useful with 1 slot. 

 

Also tldr: I wanna GO FAST and needed to justify it in some way (mostly incompetence).

[Nemu]

I am not going to focus on your choice of flight pool, you can easily adjust a build to fit those in. However, I am going to double click on your comment about fitting in those LOTG mules as a reason you took fly. Have you asked yourself what's the real benefit of cramming this much recharge into a build?

 

Compare the recharge of full auto and oil slick, two of the longest recharge attack powers in your tool kit, you have 98% global recharge in your build vs 68% in mine, yet you managed to shave off about 1-2 seconds in each of those powers. So about 3 purple set worth of recharge nets you about 1-2 seconds off your longest recharging attacks, would you consider that a great return on investment? Finally look at hasten, my build with 30% less global recharge is still only about 6 seconds off from perma, and I can still close that gap with a few force feedback proc triggers.

 

First of all you get diminishing returns from additional global recharge. Second, some builds benefit from perma hasten a lot more than others, like dominators, where domination changes the playstyle entirely for that AT, or a high DPS dual blades wielder that aims to achieve a very specific attack chain and ignore combos all together. If you have no such goals, and especially on blasters where you have access to more attacks than you can spam, ask yourself what's the real benefit of such high recharge?

[SenTheFortress]

5 hours ago, Nemu said:

I am not going to focus on your choice of flight pool, you can easily adjust a build to fit those in. However, I am going to double click on your comment about fitting in those LOTG mules as a reason you took fly. Have you asked yourself what's the real benefit of cramming this much recharge into a build?

 

Compare the recharge of full auto and oil slick, two of the longest recharge attack powers in your tool kit, you have 98% global recharge in your build vs 68% in mine, yet you managed to shave off about 1-2 seconds in each of those powers. So about 3 purple set worth of recharge nets you about 1-2 seconds off your longest recharging attacks, would you consider that a great return on investment? Finally look at hasten, my build with 30% less global recharge is still only about 6 seconds off from perma, and I can still close that gap with a few force feedback proc triggers.

 

First of all you get diminishing returns from additional global recharge. Second, some builds benefit from perma hasten a lot more than others, like dominators, where domination changes the playstyle entirely for that AT, or a high DPS dual blades wielder that aims to achieve a very specific attack chain and ignore combos all together. If you have no such goals, and especially on blasters where you have access to more attacks than you can spam, ask yourself what's the real benefit of such high recharge?

 

You raise a lot of good points, most of them can be answered with this:

 

I don't know. I'm just following what other people do blindly because I have no idea what I am doing. I'm a tiny fish talking to whales here. (3 months of experience in CoH, never played previously). I am not qualified at all to make my own builds to be honest. It'll probably take me years to catch up to experienced players like you. 

 

I do appreciate the input and the education. As of right now, instead of my initial build, the comparison to make would be with the build that Atletikus had cooked up. I did make a variant that drops the HO's and reorders the powers to my preference for exemplaring (the function/stats are almost identical though besides my change to flamethrower & burst over their choice of slug and ignite). Just examining both, they are much more comparable (the recharge rate difference is about 10% and sports better resistances in exchange for relying on purple inspos to get the def soft cap as needed instead of reaching it naturally). This is kind of what I'm working with now. Do you think this is more reasonable in terms of what you were talking about? 

 

Atletikus build - Sen edit, HOless (Assault Rifle - Tactical Arrow - Arsenal Mastery).mbd

 

Edit: Well for some reason I can't upload any files to the site (Error Code: -200) so this link is dead. I guess you can just look at Atletikus' original version above, it's mostly the same after all. Just pretend the HOs are gone and there's a Aegis: P/SR & RD: SDR slotted somewhere instead of a recharge IO on Upshot and 1 less slot on weave.

 

17 hours ago, SenTheFortress said:

I wanna GO FAST and needed to justify it in some way (mostly incompetence).

 

.....I wasn't kidding about the incompetence. 

 

 

 

Edited August 2 by SenTheFortress
Unable to upload builds to form. made note.

[Nemu]

All fair and good points. My goal is not to criticize you but rather challenge you to challenge conventional wisdom that you hear from other people. Just like you, if you ask those people why they do the things they do, the majority of them can't tell you the exact reason they did it for their specific build. But you are better than that because you are here and you've repeatedly sought feedback, so I'm going to highlight a few things to enable you to think for yourself.

 

Conventional wisdom #1

You need perma hasten on every build, meaning you literally have to get the hasten recharge down to 120 seconds and below using set bonuses - False. 

 

First of all there's diminishing returns on global recharge bonuses, some builds don't benefit that much at all from excessive recharge

Second, you can use force feedback procs to make up a few seconds gap in hasten recharge, having hasten recharge in 130 seconds is not the end of the world. You will be okay!

 

Conventional wisdom #2

You NEED a miracle/Numina/Panacea unique in health for every build. - False

I can't paste screenshots at the moment so go through this exercise in mids

Open up a new blank AR/TA build, just click on eagle eye to select the power for level 20 and click on the black dot on the right of the power to turn the toggle on. That dot should turn green. Hit the view totals button towards the top of the application and leave that window open, we are going to focus on the bottom half of that window

Slot the numina and miracle uniques both in health and note your endurance recovery numbers (End Rec)

     With a blank build with no accolades you should see 3.33 endurance per second

Now unslot all the IOs in health and slot Eagle Eye with a full set of pre-emptive optimization from the endurance recovery set

     You should see 3.8 endurance per second

 

You maybe saying, but eagle eye regenerates my health so I need to throw healing enhancements into it too!

Let's look at the numbers then

 

Same build, unslot all the pre-emptive optimization IOs from eagle eye. For the sake of the exercise let's just bump up your max health by taking all the accolades, so go into accolades and turn on task force commander, freedom phalanx reserve and portal jockey

    Hover over your regeneration stat which should show 365%, click on the regeneration stat and you will see the actual HP/Sec regeneration rate, I have 21.99 hp per second

Now slot eagle eye with a full set of numina, that includes the regen proc,

    Your regen stat shoots up to 506%. Wow! that's a lot right? Look over the actual regen rate - 31 HP per second.

 

So, blasters are squishy, they have low hit points and very little resists. When you are staring at the face of death do you think an extra 10HP per second is going to help you live when enemies are hitting you for definitely more than 31HP per hit? These blaster sustains all do one thing really well, they give you a lot of endurance recovery. That's the aspect I typically focus on.

 

People get irrational around anything that heals. But if you look at blaster survival, the most impactful stat is a mix of defense and kill speed. Dead things don't fight back, but you need enough defense to ensure you avoid just enough hits to live. If you are new, then maybe 32.5% range defense is still not enough, mezzes and debuffs will still get through, and you still have to manage a combination of lucks and breakfrees at that level of defense. The difference between 32.5% defense and 45% softcap maybe stark for you, and I think you'll be more comfortable with the latter.

 

Build optimization tip#3

One slotting certain uniques as mules

Look the slotting on hover and weave. You have the Shield wall unique in hover as a one-off and you have weave with Lotg7.5, lotg def/end and a cyto

     Total defense enhancement value in weave = 50%

     Total set bonus - 10% regen

If you shifted the Shield wall unique to weave and replaced the lotg def/end and cyto with shield wall def and def/end and +5 both those IOs, you get for the same slot investment:

     Total defense enhancement value in weave = 57%

     Total set bonus - 10% regen, +2.25% max hitpoints

AND, PVP sets don't lose the set bonus when exemped even if you +5 the PVP IOs

I see the shield wall and reactive defense unique as single slots in a lot of builds. Tiny changes like this is what separates a well tuned build from one that just blindly follows conventional wisdom.

 

Build optimization tip#4

Synergies

Ignite does a lot of damage. But it makes enemies affected by it run away. Treat it not as an area attack but a single target attack. If you want to get the most out of ignite, you need to immobilize your target so they don't run away. Take electrified net arrow, it is much more useful than ESD - you can keep problem targets at range, immob pesky runners, even arch villains with 2 applications, and make them burn.

 

There's also synergies in how set bonuses and your toolkit contribute to your overall goals with the build. As I mentioned in my Rambo thread, Tactical arrow's toolkit provides a lot of synergies with proc monster builds, supplemented by set bonuses that contribute recharge and global accuracy. 

 

I think you have a good grasp on picking out set bonuses and stacking them to get to your goal, but if you need some more examples:

 

Also, 75% of blaster survival is understanding game mechanics. Movement, target priority, inspiration use, positioning, timing etc... Master those and you will have no issues with any other AT, except Kheldians and Masterminds, those two present more technical challenges with binds/macros.

 

If you ever decide to dip your toes into a melee heavy secondary on a blaster, you may find this helpful:

 

[SenTheFortress]

On 8/3/2025 at 8:17 AM, Nemu said:

All fair and good points. My goal is not to criticize you but rather challenge you to challenge conventional wisdom that you hear from other people. Just like you, if you ask those people why they do the things they do, the majority of them can't tell you the exact reason they did it for their specific build. But you are better than that because you are here and you've repeatedly sought feedback, so I'm going to highlight a few things to enable you to think for yourself.

 

Thank you for taking the time to write all of that information. No problem, I wasn't taking it being criticized I just needed to mention the VASTNESS of my ignorance since dealing with a new player is moderately rare. I still feel behind, but people like you are helping me learn one day at a time. Truly appreciated, back to the drawing board, I'll look into the links you provided. 

 

 

Edited August 6 by SenTheFortress

[SenTheFortress]

On 8/3/2025 at 8:17 AM, Nemu said:

Conventional wisdom #1

You need perma hasten on every build, meaning you literally have to get the hasten recharge down to 120 seconds and below using set bonuses - False. 

 

First of all there's diminishing returns on global recharge bonuses, some builds don't benefit that much at all from excessive recharge

Second, you can use force feedback procs to make up a few seconds gap in hasten recharge, having hasten recharge in 130 seconds is not the end of the world. You will be okay!

 

Conventional wisdom #2

You NEED a miracle/Numina/Panacea unique in health for every build. - False

I can't paste screenshots at the moment so go through this exercise in mids

Open up a new blank AR/TA build, just click on eagle eye to select the power for level 20 and click on the black dot on the right of the power to turn the toggle on. That dot should turn green. Hit the view totals button towards the top of the application and leave that window open, we are going to focus on the bottom half of that window

Slot the numina and miracle uniques both in health and note your endurance recovery numbers (End Rec)

     With a blank build with no accolades you should see 3.33 endurance per second

Now unslot all the IOs in health and slot Eagle Eye with a full set of pre-emptive optimization from the endurance recovery set

     You should see 3.8 endurance per second

 

You maybe saying, but eagle eye regenerates my health so I need to throw healing enhancements into it too!

Let's look at the numbers then

 

Same build, unslot all the pre-emptive optimization IOs from eagle eye. For the sake of the exercise let's just bump up your max health by taking all the accolades, so go into accolades and turn on task force commander, freedom phalanx reserve and portal jockey

    Hover over your regeneration stat which should show 365%, click on the regeneration stat and you will see the actual HP/Sec regeneration rate, I have 21.99 hp per second

Now slot eagle eye with a full set of numina, that includes the regen proc,

    Your regen stat shoots up to 506%. Wow! that's a lot right? Look over the actual regen rate - 31 HP per second.

 

So, blasters are squishy, they have low hit points and very little resists. When you are staring at the face of death do you think an extra 10HP per second is going to help you live when enemies are hitting you for definitely more than 31HP per hit? These blaster sustains all do one thing really well, they give you a lot of endurance recovery. That's the aspect I typically focus on.

 

People get irrational around anything that heals. But if you look at blaster survival, the most impactful stat is a mix of defense and kill speed. Dead things don't fight back, but you need enough defense to ensure you avoid just enough hits to live. If you are new, then maybe 32.5% range defense is still not enough, mezzes and debuffs will still get through, and you still have to manage a combination of lucks and breakfrees at that level of defense. The difference between 32.5% defense and 45% softcap maybe stark for you, and I think you'll be more comfortable with the latter.

 

Build optimization tip#3

One slotting certain uniques as mules

Look the slotting on hover and weave. You have the Shield wall unique in hover as a one-off and you have weave with Lotg7.5, lotg def/end and a cyto

     Total defense enhancement value in weave = 50%

     Total set bonus - 10% regen

If you shifted the Shield wall unique to weave and replaced the lotg def/end and cyto with shield wall def and def/end and +5 both those IOs, you get for the same slot investment:

     Total defense enhancement value in weave = 57%

     Total set bonus - 10% regen, +2.25% max hitpoints

AND, PVP sets don't lose the set bonus when exemped even if you +5 the PVP IOs

I see the shield wall and reactive defense unique as single slots in a lot of builds. Tiny changes like this is what separates a well tuned build from one that just blindly follows conventional wisdom.

 

Build optimization tip#4

Synergies

Ignite does a lot of damage. But it makes enemies affected by it run away. Treat it not as an area attack but a single target attack. If you want to get the most out of ignite, you need to immobilize your target so they don't run away. Take electrified net arrow, it is much more useful than ESD - you can keep problem targets at range, immob pesky runners, even arch villains with 2 applications, and make them burn.

 

There's also synergies in how set bonuses and your toolkit contribute to your overall goals with the build. As I mentioned in my Rambo thread, Tactical arrow's toolkit provides a lot of synergies with proc monster builds, supplemented by set bonuses that contribute recharge and global accuracy. 

 

I think you have a good grasp on picking out set bonuses and stacking them to get to your goal, but if you need some more examples:

 

Also, 75% of blaster survival is understanding game mechanics. Movement, target priority, inspiration use, positioning, timing etc... Master those and you will have no issues with any other AT, except Kheldians and Masterminds, those two present more technical challenges with binds/macros.

 

If you ever decide to dip your toes into a melee heavy secondary on a blaster, you may find this helpful:

 

 

 

Hi all, 

I've spent a few hours reading through the links Nemu provided. I decided to try to make this AR/TA Blaster build from scratch by considering what I've learned, especially regarding slotting for Ranged Defense from efficient sources and being a bit more loose about perma-haste and recharge in general. 

 

It compares well with the "Rambo" build, I didn't even look at or reference it at all when making this, so I think the lessons learned were truly learned. So thanks Nemu. There's probably some optimizations to make but I think I'm starting to get on the right track. 

 

 

scoutythespeedyv2(1).mbd

[Nemu]

I prefer cryo freeze ray to Ice Arrow. It has a longer recharge meaning your procs are more likely to go off, and it's a good place for the decimation chance for build up proc. That proc has a proc rate of 1 trigger per minute, so you'd want to put that in your longest recharging ranged attack. Cryo also uses the gun so it fits well into your regular attack rotation.

 

My take on surveillance is: You are a blaster, you are not a debuffer. If you debuff as a byproduct of attacking, so be it, but going out of your way to debuff a single target is something you can leave to teammates that do that better than you. The things that you will need that single target debuff for are usually things you tackle as a team. If you want to make this blaster an AV/GM soloer, then this power brings more value.

 

I would also not go out of my way for +dmg bonuses. Blasters get a damage buff just by attacking, and going 5 slots deep just for a 2.5% dmg buff with shield wall is wasteful. I would just stop at 3 pieces, 4.5% energy resistance is not going to do much for you when you have less than 20% even with the 4.5% bonus.

 

Weave provides more base defense than Maneuvers. I would slot shield wall in that so you can +5 the PVP IOs and not lose the set bonus, you get more ROI with +5 IOs in a power that offers higher base values. I'm also not a big advocate of 6 slotting reactive defense for the recharge bonus. Usually I stop at 3 for the HP bonus  IMO there are usually better ways to get more recharge. For example if you dropped ice arrow and surveillance you can fit in cryo and ignite. With the slots you recover you can put a set of Ragnarok in ignite which gives you even more recharge, and additional global ACC to assist with proc monster cryo accuracy. My accuracy benchmark for all builds is against +4s. So I want to make sure this number stays above 95% when I set enemies relative to my level to +4 in Mids.

 

The thing I don't like about flight is that both hover and evasive costs more endurance than just a simple combat jumping (and the fact that I am a big fan of jousting). Even though blasters have a lot of endurance recovery via their level 20 sustains, all those toggle still add up. I shuffled some slots around in the below build to add some more endurance reduction in your toggles. I'd consider musculature radial for more damage and more endurance modification as an alternative to intuition. In this case perhaps a miracle is called for in health, but I can see a preventative med proc in its place just as well.

 

scoutythespeedyv Nemu edit.mbd

[SenTheFortress]

6 minutes ago, Nemu said:

I prefer cryo freeze ray to Ice Arrow. It has a longer recharge meaning your procs are more likely to go off, and it's a good place for the decimation chance for build up proc. That proc has a proc rate of 1 trigger per minute, so you'd want to put that in your longest recharging ranged attack. Cryo also uses the gun so it fits well into your regular attack rotation.

 

My take on surveillance is: You are a blaster, you are not a debuffer. If you debuff as a byproduct of attacking, so be it, but going out of your way to debuff a single target is something you can leave to teammates that do that better than you. The things that you will need that single target debuff for are usually things you tackle as a team. If you want to make this blaster an AV/GM soloer, then this power brings more value.

 

I would also not go out of my way for +dmg bonuses. Blasters get a damage buff just by attacking, and going 5 slots deep just for a 2.5% dmg buff with shield wall is wasteful. I would just stop at 3 pieces, 4.5% energy resistance is not going to do much for you when you have less than 20% even with the 4.5% bonus.

 

Weave provides more base defense than Maneuvers. I would slot shield wall in that so you can +5 the PVP IOs and not lose the set bonus, you get more ROI with +5 IOs in a power that offers higher base values. I'm also not a big advocate of 6 slotting reactive defense for the recharge bonus. Usually I stop at 3 for the HP bonus  IMO there are usually better ways to get more recharge. For example if you dropped ice arrow and surveillance you can fit in cryo and ignite. With the slots you recover you can put a set of Ragnarok in ignite which gives you even more recharge, and additional global ACC to assist with proc monster cryo accuracy. My accuracy benchmark for all builds is against +4s. So I want to make sure this number stays above 95% when I set enemies relative to my level to +4 in Mids

 

The thing I don't like about flight is that both hover and evasive costs more endurance than just a simple combat jumping (and the fact that I am a big fan of jousting). Even though blasters have a lot of endurance recovery via their level 20 sustains, all those toggle still add up. I shuffled some slots around in the below build to add some more endurance reduction in your toggles. I'd consider musculature radial for more damage and more endurance modification as an alternative to intuition. In this case perhaps a miracle is called for in health, but I can see a preventative med proc in its place just as well.

 

Cool, thanks for the fine tuning here. My intial thought was using Ice arrow since I can take it much sooner, therefore being able to use it for exemplar much more often. But given that people rarely run low level content above +2 Not, I probably don't really need it and Cyro would be better with a longer recharge. 

 

Fair point, leave that for a Sentinel or a dedicated debuffer.

 

I wasn't intending to go for % DMG bonus, cut the fat from the build, by all means. 

 

Very good point, I guess that's a part of the lesson I missed. This is a good general tip as well. Yep, I was accounting for +4 always. I left accuracy floating in the 100%ish range minimum to account for To-Hit debuffs, But if you don't think it's very relevant, tune it closer to 95% by all means (I suppse Upshot and build up procs help with this on their own).

 

Ha, unfortunately I'm very adamant on flight specifically for this character. More of an RP thing. Nice, you shaved off a bit more, thanks for that! 

I figured since the END recover/Drain ratio is similar to "Rambo" it will be just fine, but I'll consider swapping Alpha's if end becomes an issue.