I'd love to be able to solo on a blaster... is this possible?

[Shang]

Looking to build a blaster that will be able to do +2/x8 content or +4/x8 content with some ease like the melee toons can do.

 

I've put together a build that soft caps the defence of Smash, Lethal, Fire, Cold and Energy.

 

Would this suffice?

 

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.962

http://www.cohplanner.com/

 

Click this DataLink to open the build!

 

              : Level 50 Magic Blaster

Primary Power Set: Archery

Secondary Power Set: Fire Manipulation

Power Pool: Leadership

Power Pool: Leaping

Power Pool: Fighting

Power Pool: Speed

Ancillary Pool: Mace Mastery

 

Hero Profile:

Level 1: Aimed Shot -- SprWntBit-Rchg/SlowProc(A), SprWntBit-Dmg/EndRdx/Acc/Rchg(3), SprWntBit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(3), SprWntBit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(5), SprWntBit-Dmg/Rchg(5), SprWntBit-Acc/Dmg(7)

Level 1: Ring of Fire -- Acc-I(A)

Level 2: Fistful of Arrows -- SprDfnBrr-Acc/Dmg(A), SprDfnBrr-Dmg/Rchg(7), SprDfnBrr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(9), SprDfnBrr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(9), SprDfnBrr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(11), SprDfnBrr-Rchg/+Status Protect(11)

Level 4: Fire Sword -- SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg(A), SprBlsCol-Dmg/EndRdx/Acc/Rchg(15), SprBlsCol-Dmg/EndRdx(17), SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(17), SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(19), SprBlsCol-Rchg/HoldProc(19)

Level 6: Maneuvers -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A), Rct-Def(21), Rct-Def/EndRdx(21)

Level 8: Aim -- RechRdx-I(A)

Level 10: Fire Sword Circle -- SprAvl-Rchg/KDProc(A), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(23), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(23), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(25), SprAvl-Dmg/EndRdx(25), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg(27)

Level 12: Super Jump -- Empty(A)

Level 14: Combat Jumping -- Rct-ResDam%(A), LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(27)

Level 16: Build Up -- RechRdx-I(A)

Level 18: Boxing -- Dmg-I(A)

Level 20: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(46), RechRdx-I(50)

Level 22: Explosive Arrow -- SprFrzBls-Acc/Dmg(A), SprFrzBls-Dmg/EndRdx(29), SprFrzBls-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(29), SprFrzBls-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(31), SprFrzBls-Dmg/EndRdx/Acc/Rchg(31), SprFrzBls-Rchg/ImmobProc(31)

Level 24: Blazing Arrow -- Apc-Dmg(A), Apc-Dmg/Rchg(33), Apc-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), Apc-Acc/Rchg(33), Apc-Dam%(34)

Level 26: Tough -- GldArm-3defTpProc(A), StdPrt-ResDam/Def+(34), UnbGrd-Max HP%(34), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(36), UnbGrd-ResDam(36), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx(36)

Level 28: Weave -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A), Rct-Def(37), Rct-Def/EndRdx(37)

Level 30: Cauterizing Aura -- Erd-%Dam(A), Erd-Dmg(37), Erd-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(39)

Level 32: Rain of Arrows -- SprBlsWrt-Rchg/Dmg%(A), SprBlsWrt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(39), SprBlsWrt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(39), SprBlsWrt-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(40), SprBlsWrt-Dmg/Rchg(40), SprBlsWrt-Acc/Dmg(40)

Level 35: Scorpion Shield -- Rct-Def(A), Rct-Def/EndRdx(42), LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(42), ShlWal-ResDam/Re TP(42)

Level 38: Hot Feet -- Arm-Dmg(A), Arm-Dmg/Rchg(43), Arm-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(43), Arm-Acc/Rchg(43), Arm-Dam%(45), FuroftheG-ResDeb%(45)

Level 41: Burn -- Erd-Dmg/Rchg(A), Erd-Dmg(45), Erd-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(46)

Level 44: Summon Spiderlings -- SlbAll-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(A), SlbAll-Acc/Rchg(46)

Level 47: Web Cocoon -- SprEnt-Acc/Hold(A), SprEnt-Hold/Rchg(48), SprEnt-End/Rchg(48), SprEnt-Acc/Hold/End(48), SprEnt-Acc/Hold/End/Rchg(50), SprEnt-Rchg/AbsorbProc(50)

Level 49: Acrobatics -- EndRdx-I(A)

Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)

Level 1: Sprint -- UnbLea-Stlth(A)

Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)

Level 1: Defiance

Level 4: Ninja Run

Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A)

Level 2: Health -- Mrc-Rcvry+(A), NmnCnv-Regen/Rcvry+(13), Pnc-Heal/+End(13)

Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)

Level 2: Stamina -- PrfShf-End%(A), PrfShf-EndMod(15)

Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A)

Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A)

Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A)

Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A)

Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A)

Level 50: Agility Core Paragon

------------

 

Any advice would be grand as to what to look for if I'm looking at the wrong kind of Archetype to do that on.

 

Looking forward to your replies.

 

Regards,

Shang.

 

 

[SmalltalkJava]

I asked Bentley Berkeley (who’s an old school long time blaster) about soloing as a blaster and some general advice over PM a few days ago. Here is his advice.  It makes a lot of sense to me.  Even though it isn’t the skills that you have listed above.

 

“I speak specifically for blasters but some of it is universal.

 

Dark is an oft under rated set because its not huge upfront DPS even on a blaster. However its to hit debuff aspect can increase a blasters survival by a huge factor. Especially if you slot the powers with to hit debuff IO sets. at least partially as you still want to buff their dmg at least with 2 lvl 50 dmg IOs in the end for some solid punch.

 

Mental secondary is great for several things, but mostly for Drain PSyche, with the right slotting it will give you max end recovery and as high as a 100 hp a second regen at end lvl. Which is not that  far from what a regen scrapper is able to top out at.

 

Psi dmg in general is the least resisted dmg type in the game, with a  number of enemies having an acute weakness to it like the clockworks. This helps compensate and then surpass other dmg sets even when one factors in Psi slightly lower base numbers.

 

Psi also has alot of soft cc as does ment 2ndary, knockdown and knock backs, disorients and confusions. drain pscyhe also debuffs enemy regen making it very useful on power fuls as just a debuff attack

 

So if your considering a blaster I really suggest dark, sonic, and psi as top primaries for their various uses, and almost always mental 2ndary unless you just cant figure a way to justify it concept wise”

[Sovera]

You can solo on a blaster, of course. The trick is, sure, softcap defenses, but you're not going to be doing glorious battle. What you are going to do is launch your nukes from a distance and watch things die.

 

If you start the fight by having thrown your nuke at a pack, backed by Aim and Build-Up, nothing much will have survived and thus nothing much will be shooting back at you.

[Novacat]

Well, a decent amount of stuff will have survived and be very, very angry at +4/x8.

Throw in your Judgement and an AoE for good measure or you might not like the return-fire.

[Heraclea]

My blaster solos most everything reasonably well, but is a multiple stealthed electric/electric blaster.  Her method is to slip unnoticed into the middle of the spawn and hit everything with the big nuke followed by Power Sink.  I have almost got her to perma-Hasten as well, so this is a working strategy for most every spawn.  Anything still standing will have zero endurance for at least a couple seconds, and will be mostly harmless. 

[Jeneki]

A few days ago I went through the Dark Astoria arc with a fire/fire at +4x8.  Incarnate shifts make that quite a bit easier than it sounds though.

[Lurkingtroll]

Absolutely!

 

I play Wit Spark on Everlasting, you're welcome to come work with me for a mish or two:

 

I have two builds. One for normal content, blasting away with softcapped ranged and Energy/Negative Energy defenses, as well as ~50% S/L resist. It's not bad, I poke bad guys, and generally am a cheery ally to have on your side, or soloist.

 

My second build is much less cuddly, and is purely focused on fire farming. 49% fire defense, 74.7% fire resist. I literally just float through crowds of foes to aggro the map, drop a Bonfire with KB to KD in it for control, and crush the map in about 3 minutes.

 

I don't use inspirations except to clear out smalls I don't feel like holding onto to sell, either.

 

You can do it!

[DocRadio]

I took a triple fire and a triple elec to 50 before IO's were a thing. Before Incarnates, Also before sustains and the changes to nukes and snipes. You have to play carefully and rely on inspirations quite a bit but yeah it's doable. I'm cake walking with a Rad/Rad blaster right now and expect to do the same with ICE/NRG. I soloed a large amount of the content, only teaming up for super group missions, task forces and Elite AV's. I'm even re-rolling my fire/fire to see what it's like to level one in the new environment. Even though I frikken hated the fire secondary. But that was before cauterizing wounds.

[Troyusrex]

As a very successful fire/fire/fire farmer I'd strongly endorse the "kill them before they kill you" mentality. I hadn't intended to create a farmer, I was just looking to have fun by creating the most damage dealing build I could. Even the incarnate slots are all geared towards extra damage rather than protection. I do have some protection (fire shield, tough, weave), but haven't found it increases survivability much (with the exception of the amazing T4 Barrier). Focusing on damage output worked so well that I did the Tina McIntyre arc alone and then joined a few others farming and realized I was farming better than many of the farmers I teamed with. I've gone on to farm an awful lot of hours since then.

 

Basically, either I kill almost the entire group very quickly or I faceplant. I have two mega damage powers, Inferno and a T4 Pyro Judgement. Either one (preferably with Build up first) will wipe out all minions and LTs (with the occasional miss) and seriously damage Bosses. A quick fireball and consume clears out the rest, although it isn't uncommon for me to have to chase down a boss or two. If there are three bosses in a group and all of them survive the first couple of seconds then it's usually a tough time for me and I need inspirations. Any timing issue is deadly. So, if you jump into the middle of a group and don't hit Inferno within about a half-second, you'll be faceplanted. Aggro a second nearby group, and faceplant. With Inferno, positioning is also key. Miss half the group with your BOOM and face an awful lot of incoming fire.

 

The T4 Judgement does notably less damage than inferno (although over a great area!), and so bosses are more likely to survive, in turn making ME less likely to survive. Still, usually VERY doable without inspirations. But, having to hit the bosses 4 times instead of 2 or 3 to finish them is a very notable difference.

 

For those times when both Inferno and Judgement are recharging I either suck down inspirations like they are M&Ms, or I use my T4 Barrier before going in. Both work well. (note, whoever said you'd be at the damage cap by combining inspirations has a very different experience than what I've seen. My movement powers are bound to auto-convert all inspirations to damage, but even so inspirations usually get me to around 200. With Build up, 300% is usual. It's notable when I hit the full 400% when soloing).

 

I have the farm down well and I'm at over Veteran Level 67 from it. I farm many things, but mostly the Council. I'm very quick and efficient (when farming with others I tend to go about 150% as fast as other farmers). Even so, faceplanting is not in any way unusual. Probably once every other map. After a drink or two the rate rises rapidly, showing how critical timing is to success. Rise of the Phoenix is one power I don't think I could live without!

 

TL;DR - In short, I advocate going full out for AoE damage, with recharge super helpful as well. Defense and resistance are helpful, but not at the expense of more damage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Murcielago]

Build for s/l/e defense if you want to play a blapper, build for ranged defense if you want to play range. Or just roll a sentinel.  :P

[MunkiLord]

Also take Provoke, that's what I did.

[natewest1987]

On the topic of fire/fire/fire - anyone mind to share their builds?  I leveled one up today feeling inspired by this thread and... face planted, a lot. I can solo fire farms +4/8’s if I turn off bosses, slower than my brutes, but more fun.  Less money though.  I got to around 41% fire defense, 60% fire resist.  With bosses on I die very quickly. 

 

Big difference between brute and blaster... everything runs from me.  They literally run out of the burn patches, and forget about casting rain of fire.  Any tips on power selections ? 

[MunkiLord]

I don't have a build, but I'd get that last 4% fire defense if you can, it will help a lot. And you can slot a chance for knockdown proc in a few of your AoE attacks with Ragnorok and Avalanche. Not sure how often they go off, but it can help with the runners. And if you haven't already, definitely put Sudden Acceleration KB to KD in Bonfire.

[natewest1987]

Thanks for the build.  I used it as a Template to do fire/fire/ice one.  At first I followed the build without buildup but that was sooo slow lol.   Tomorrow I’ll post it on a different thread, I don’t want to keep hijacking OP’s post.  If you see it when posted, would love some input. 

[MrCuddles]

Yea you can. Here is a video of me trying to do the ITF solo at +4*8 but without using temp powers. I die a lot, but I also do fairly well I think. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/456513924

 

You can solo with blasters at lower levels/without incarnates too, you just might need to take it more easily than I do in this video (or abuse ranged defense and hover but that's boring :))

Edited July 26, 2019 by MrCuddles

[HelenCarnate]

Did a market Crash last night at +2 and I went one way, the group went another.  The tank's and brute's HP bar was moving more than mine.  The last fight with Fire/Atomic I ended up tanking the last boss for the latter part of the fight.  The tank either didn't take taunt or never used it and I was doing enough damage to pull aggro and keep it and thanks to capped defense to everything but negative or psi, was able to survive with needing to pop a total of 3 heal inspirations (no healer on the team).  Now +4 stuff would be a bit more difficult but doable and probably slower than a /fire brute on a fire farm but likely faster than that same brute on a random map with stuff other than fire damage.  So yes they can solo but you have to build a lot of defense and a lot of recharge to be effective.

Edited July 26, 2019 by HelenCarnate
I can't spell.

[NaiDarkstar]

My original blaster build could solo, you just had to use your head. She was electric/ice.

Poke a baddy or the group, duck around a corner, place ice patch (slotted with cooldown of course), watch them all funnel into your patch and keep slipping over and over again. place patches and dps until group is dead, repeat.

even worked on flying enemies if you used your root to pull them to ground level.

[Novacat]

Back in the day before i24, that was a spurious claim. Blasters could solo just like how I can play when on satellite internet: Technically. I can log in, technically I can get past the character select screen, technically I can run around on the map and do things... just ignore the 750 or so ping and mapserver disconnects if I dare try to team on top of that...

A Blaster's ability to solo was nothing compared to basically every other AT - difficulty and time required were magnitudes worse than anybody else.

 

Today it's an entirely different affair. Sustains and crashless nukes both helped here. IO sets helped catch-up a little but they were also helping catapult everyone else to even greater heights. But the i24 changes? What used to be quickly-lethal chipping by minions can now be recovered or shielded-against relatively well. The occasional heavy attack by an AV or GM when you're in a team no longer keeps you in the red until the next one that finishes you off - you might even be near-full again by then. The modern blaster is no Scrapper/Brute, but they can actually do the content by more than the most technical of definitions.

 

Blasters still want to make good use of terrain (if you have trip-mines, ice patches, caltrops or others that corner is your friend), and target priority's certainly a thing; you want to wipe out the mezzers or sappers just like anybody else (and may one-shot a lot of those with your alpha-strike which others may not pull off), vaporize as much of the group as possible, and then take out the hardier higher ranked things with a good attack chain. Still fragile, but manageable nowadays. Portal Jockey for example, I did with AVs rather than elite bosses, all solo, though I had to bring it down to +1/x2 since I wasn't fully IO'd at the time.

[MunkiLord]

On 8/11/2019 at 12:36 PM, Novacat said:

The modern blaster is no Scrapper/Brute,

I'm starting to think Blasters are the new Scrappers, at least maybe for me.

[Mr. Vee]

They're way easier to solo than ever before, and if you're having trouble you can take bonfire at 35 on any of them 😛

[Eva Destruction]

On 8/11/2019 at 1:36 PM, Novacat said:

Back in the day before i24, that was a spurious claim. Blasters could solo just like how I can play when on satellite internet: Technically. I can log in, technically I can get past the character select screen, technically I can run around on the map and do things... just ignore the 750 or so ping and mapserver disconnects if I dare try to team on top of that...

A Blaster's ability to solo was nothing compared to basically every other AT - difficulty and time required were magnitudes worse than anybody else.

 

This is utter BS.  Blasters could solo before i24.  You had to be a bit more careful, the margin for error was smaller, but they could solo, and much faster than some ATs.  "Can't solo like a Scrapper or Brute can" doesn't mean "can't solo."

[Novacat]

Crawling at a fraction of the speed anyone else can with many times the risk and faceplant rate is not 'soloing' in anywhere near the same sense as those other ATs were soloing. And most of that was thanks to IOs, whose defense and resistance bonuses were often larger than what their own powers had to offer.

[Coyote]

9 hours ago, Novacat said:

Crawling at a fraction of the speed anyone else can with many times the risk and faceplant rate is not 'soloing' in anywhere near the same sense as those other ATs were soloing. And most of that was thanks to IOs, whose defense and resistance bonuses were often larger than what their own powers had to offer.

 

That's an exaggeration.

On the average, Blasters were not good soloers, BUT there were builds that soloed well, usually based on having controls. An Ice/EM Blaster would solo better than a FF/Rad Defender, or Earth/Empathy Controller, for example. So, the words "a fraction of the speed ANYONE ELSE can" is clearly exaggerated.

Hyperbole is not a good arguing methodology. Clearly, Blasters were soloing worse on the average than most or all of the other ATs, which is why the Live Devs were looking into ways to improve their soloing ability (enter Sustain)... but saying that they all had many times the risk and faceplant rate is just inaccurate.

[subbacultchas]

You can feasibly make melee ranged blasters that can solo and even farm well too. I made a Water/Fire blaster with near capped defenses, tons of aoe/pbaoe, and bonfire for some level of controls. It soloed just fine from level 1 to where I left him at 47 (boring playstyle IMO), without much in the way of dying. Heck, one Buildup + Geyser + FSC and you've pretty much cleared anything that isn't a boss in groups in +2-4 x8.

Blasters are definitely soloable, and can exist in melee ranged if you remember that ranged attacks don't have to have distance.

[Novacat]

4 hours ago, Coyote said:

but saying that they all had many times the risk and faceplant rate is just inaccurate.

Having many times the faceplanting rate and risk was the devs own words on the matter. It was why the i24 changes were so heavy (+50% recovery and 225% regen is no small tweak)