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

[Myrmidon]

Water/WP/Leviathan Sentinel 

 

Soon, it will be the end of your surface-dweller ways.

[Tahliah]

On 8/17/2019 at 8:40 AM, Obitus said:

Depending on what you mean by "massive hp or resistance or defense," I'm not sure your position is accurate.  Sure, Blasters aren't ideal in farming content, mostly because they get much more scatter than e.g. a Brute with a taunt aura.  That extra scatter can exacerbate the Blaster's durability disadvantages, which are considerable.

 

Still, IO builds generally don't present you with a direct, 1:1 trade off between offense and defense.  The idea that a Blaster built to be a "glass cannon" must have oodles more offense than, say, a build with soft-capped Ranged or S/L DEF, is a persistent myth - similar to the persistent myth on the live forums that Blasters must have far and away the best DPS simply because they should.  (The latter was a common refrain going back to way before we had all of our new shiny toys, even before old toys like Defiance and the increased AT damage scalar.)

 

Once you pass a certain level of global recharge, there isn't a whole hell of a lot you can do to improve offense.  You can chase +damage bonuses, sure, but those are generally tiny unless you really sell out to get them, and even if you do sell out for them you'll be lucky to net more than about a 10% advantage over the next guy, at the high end.  These days, you can also go the proc route, and admittedly this approach can be very potent, but even a (relatively) defensive build can usually afford to slot out one or two attacks with the best unique procs.

 

Compare the net benefit of these approaches to the prospect of avoiding 90% of all incoming attacks from a preferred type or vector.  There's just no contest.  So it's certainly valid to build a glass cannon; if you enjoy that play style more power to you, and I'm sure you're effective with it, but I wouldn't assume that a more defensive build "can't touch your DPS."  If I'm wrong about that, I'd love to see your build.

 

You make great points, Obitus.  I am thinking mostly of my main, who with ice/ice/ice, has a lot of mitigation (-def, -recharge, slows, holds, sleeps, etc.), so dps coupled with the mitigation makes her kind of damagey.  I chose to pick up mitigation over (say) tough and weave for survivability and slotted accordingly (with sets mostly, blaster, purples, etc.).  Most of the ice/ice holds do damage (typically over time), so the mitigation serves two purposes to me. 

 

I can definitely see opting for tough and weave, and I've seen blasters with the medicine pool (usually aid self), etc.  That's just not the way I went with mine; nothing wrong with either choice, and who knows I may do a second build on her that focuses on defense/resist, etc. rather than on damage and mitigation.  Actually, that sounds kind of fun! 

 

Slotting, as you note is key, too, and I focused on damage, acc, recovery,  and recharge.  I totally sold out on her build, and rather than a lengthy block of set bonuses, her list is pretty compact and focused on these areas.  The other set bonuses I have are great, of course, and I do have resist/defense, kb protection, etc. procs to add to survivability, but I didn't focus on that in my build because I wanted those other yummies much more.   With the procs + sets + mitigation she does really well solo, and who knows? she may be able to do +4/x8 content (I haven't tried that solo).  It's not something I enjoy enough to try, to be honest.  Although she has a few aoe's, as an ice blaster, most of her blasts are single-target, and I have this horror of spending ages slowly slogging through content when I could be enjoying some good old-fashioned carnage.  heh

 

Anyway, your point is taken.  Between the variety of choices even within our AT (plus powerpools) and slotting, no two ice/ice blasters are the same let alone any two blasters and blappers.  And actually, to take that even further, if someone had an ice/ice/ice blaster built just like mine, they'd probably play her differently than I do mine!  What a fun train of thought.