Best secondary sustain power?

[Rinwen]

Hello, Lords & Ladies of the super powers. 

 

I'm curious as to opinions on the best of the Blaster secondary sustain powers.

 

I once lamented that the Energy one was a 30 second click on a 60 second recharge. 

 

Then some folks replied that you can put enough enhancements into it to make it Perma.

 

Intriguing... my En/En is my favorite Blaster, (SOOOOO many alts, SOOOOO little playtime, so nothing is past Lv 12 yet though, lol).

 

So... what are people's opinions on the best sustain power?

 

I gotta say, looking at Tactical Arrow, those 3 powers; Gymnastics, Agility, & Eagle Eye, seem the best powers of all.

 

I'm actually planning a build an as of yet undetermined Primary, not Archery, that will go /TA and only pick those 3 powers, and simply not use the 1st power you're forced to take.

 

So, what say ye Lords & Ladies?

 

Thanks for joining the fun.

 

Take care. 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 29, 2019 by Rinwen
Misspelling

[Galaxy Brain]

I would guess any of them that could be stacked? 🤔

[Marshal_General]

I like the ice one and the radiation one. Ice gives -recharge, -damage and slows targets around you and the radiation one gives a 20% haste buff.

[Frosticus]

1 hour ago, Marshal_General said:

I like the ice one and the radiation one. Ice gives -recharge, -damage and slows targets around you and the radiation one gives a 20% haste buff.

ya plus with beta decay you can get crazy levels of +rech going. it is nuke-tacular

[Novacat]

Atomic: Metabolic Acceleration:  Toggle, Type Regen.  27.7% resist to Hold/Sleep/Stun/Immob. +20% Global Recharge

This is a good one. The recharge is a boon, and the resists won't really be all that noticeable but every little bit helps.

 

Darkness: Touch of the Beyond: Click, Type Regen. Inflicts Mag3 fear on a single target and grants the bonuses for 60s to self. Technically grants Defiance 7.7% due to being an activated one.

Worst in Slot. Short duration, 1.32s cast time, and its whole special effect is a crappy single target fear that you'll be a bit too busy filling with heal and endmod to properly expand upon.

 

Devices: Field Operative: Toggle, Type Regen. 1.75% Defense(All) and some Stealth.

You can always use even just one more slot to fit Luck's global recharge, or scaling resist(all) or some other set global, and while not spectacular it's a mild extra bit of defense on an AT for whom every little scrap needs to be gathered up, and stealth's a handy utility often sought for by Blasters, all packed into a single level 20 pick.

 

Electrical: Force of Thunder: Click, Type Regen. 15ft PBAoE Mag 2 Stun with 50% Knockback chance.

A significantly improved click over Darkness; this one helps ensure that things around you get debilitated for your efforts - if only mildly and temporarily.

 

Energy: Energize: Click, Type Regen. 119.2% Endurance Cost Discount replaces +50% Recovery. 10% Heal

Another click more worth its time than Darkness'. Energize vastly diminishes costs, and both the regen AND heal components are affected by your heal modules. Make sure you get its recharge times cut by at least half (as if you weren't going to in the first place) though.

 

Fire: Cauterizing Aura: Toggle, Type Heal (base 1.5%), minor fire DoT.

A slightly more powerful heal than the regen types far as I understand it (it's not like your .58% health per second base with Health has disappeared), accompanied by a rather small 8ft damage zone. Not that it's bad, but terribly overshadowed by...

 

Ice: Frigid Protection: Toggle, Type TempHP. 30ft Radius -Dmg, Slow, -Recharge. Available at LEVEL 10.

One of the top contenders and the true power behind blapping with the Ice secondary. No one in your party will complain about you blanketing clusters of mobs with this. Absorb shields offer better protection than regen types especially vs counter-alphas, but does nothing to recover from large hits far apart (such as the occasional AoEs of an AV) or green in between battles. Overall though, slightly better.

 

Martial: Reaction Time: Toggle, Type TempHP. 30ft Radius Slow, -Recharge. +40% Recharge (Self)

A strong one to be sure. Rather than -Dmg to enemies, this one gives you higher recharge speed yourself. That's right. Your Sustain is just over half a perma-haste all on its own.

 

Psychic: Drain Psyche: Click, Type Regen (Variable). 10ft Radius -regen/-recover

The original Sustain. Before there was that word, there was Drain Psyche. Shortest duration of all clicky Sustains, but increases in value with every target hit for overwhelming results. Which it is going to need because that 30s duration is up against a 120s recharge time - Energize is easy to perma, but this one's going to need haste first before you start to pull that off.

 

Ninjas: Kuji-in Toh: Click, Type Regen. 8.3 Fear protection, 7% Psi resist.

The longest of the clickies. Protects from fear (meh), protects from psionics, and lasts 3.5 minutes so you don't have to click it again every other fight. And despite that, still one of the faster clicky Sustains at 1.19s. Can be Perma out of the box, the duration's 10s more than its base recharge time.

 

Plants: Wild Fortress: Toggle, Type TempHP. confusion protect, 13% toxic resist

Well, it's not bad. Again not the most useful of mez protections, but toxic res ain't bad and worst-case scenario you could use one of the slots to fit a Resist global or something.

 

TacArrow: Eagle Eye: Toggle, Type Regen. 20% Accuracy, 60% perception, resistance to debuffs against both those things

Well, it's not a targeting drone, but 20% accuracy is 20% accuracy. Nothing spectacular on its own as a Sustain, but this IS the same set that also offers Upshot (Build-Up + 30% recharge) the auto-power Agility (+fly/run speeds and +20% recharge) as well as the Gymnastics (defense, KB/Kup protection, hold/stun/immob 83% resists, jump height up) toggle, so the set as a whole adds up to serious buff-happiness

 

Time: Temporal Healing: Toggle, Type TempHP. Gives -Regen and Slow resists.

unimpressive, but like TacArrow, the set as a whole offers more buffs elsewhere to take advantage of (notably Time Lord at 38 here). While under Accelerated (Chronos, its build-up equivalent) there's about 40% more total absorption too.

 

So, depending on what you want to be doing, the best sustains are probably Reaction Time for the toggles, and Drain Psyche for the clicky types.

[Coyote]

One note about Force of Thunder: you can put a Force Feedback in it, and using it will then net you a higher average Recharge buff than a LotG. It will use up some animation time, but depending on how it's coded, you may be able to get the FF to fire even if you're between fights (depends if it spawns a pet or it's enemy-targeted... but if it's enemy-targeted, then its chance to activate goes up as spawn size goes up).

[Frosticus]

3 hours ago, Coyote said:

One note about Force of Thunder: you can put a Force Feedback in it, and using it will then net you a higher average Recharge buff than a LotG. It will use up some animation time, but depending on how it's coded, you may be able to get the FF to fire even if you're between fights (depends if it spawns a pet or it's enemy-targeted... but if it's enemy-targeted, then its chance to activate goes up as spawn size goes up).

It's my intention to test this out maybe tonight as I just picked it up on my rad/elec project blapper.

The recover/regen is auto upon casting and the kb rolls a tohit, but i'd like to try it out to see how effective it is. 

[Uun]

On 7/28/2019 at 6:30 AM, Novacat said:

Time: Temporal Healing: Toggle, Type TempHP. Gives -Regen and Slow resists.

unimpressive, but like TacArrow, the set as a whole offers more buffs elsewhere to take advantage of (notably Time Lord at 38 here). While under Accelerated (Chronos, its build-up equivalent) there's about 40% more total absorption too.

Temporal Healing gives a small amount of absorption, but it's primarily +recovery. HUGE amounts of +recovery. 

[oedipus_tex]

The /Fire one to me is most useful, though I haven't got any actual data to back this up. It provides raw Healing values, as in literally little green numbers over your head. I was shocked by how much healing it actually provides. Since it's raw Healing it should also in theory benefit from set bonuses that improve Healing. More importantly though the values are high enough that in a lot of fights, unless you die outright, you can often run away a short distance to charge your health bar back up and then come back.

 

Edited July 29, 2019 by oedipus_tex

[Novacat]

3 hours ago, Uun said:

Temporal Healing gives a small amount of absorption, but it's primarily +recovery. HUGE amounts of +recovery. 

Actually it's dead-standard for Sustains which is why I didn't mention it - they nearly all count as a double Stamina by default (just like the regen types are 225% +regen half of which is enhanceable). Drain Psyche and Energize are the two exceptions for that.

3 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

It provides raw Healing values, as in literally little green numbers over your head. I was shocked by how much healing it actually provides. Since it's raw Healing it should also in theory benefit from set bonuses that improve Healing.

You're not wrong. It does provide slightly more than standard regen types - although all Regen-class sustains cause your green bar to visibly replenish over moderate amounts of time that way.

With two 50 heal IOs your Cauterizing aura reaches 2.75% healing every 2s, separate-from and in-addition-to any regen you may have (at a strict minimum you have 140% regen from being alive and having Health). If you have nothing other than Portal Jockey, for 105% max health, this means that every 2s you recover 34.794 HP, or basically 17.4/s, plus your base regeneration of 7.38/s. Total 24.774 or thereabouts.

A standard +regen type on the other hand with two 50 IOs this way (healing bonuses do affect +regen) will be at 459% regeneration, which for 105% max health is 24.18 HP per second.

 

So Cauterizing Aura's about .5hp/s stronger, but also a tiny bit better at scaling. Just a little though.

[Omnicron]

On 7/28/2019 at 3:30 AM, Novacat said:

Inflicts Mag3 fear on a single target and grants the bonuses for 60s to self. Technically grants Defiance 7.7% due to being an activated one.

Worst in Slot. Short duration, 1.32s cast time, and its whole special effect is a crappy single target fear that you'll be a bit too busy filling with heal and endmod to properly expand upon.

So I just got done with a pistols/mental blaster, loved the scrapper-esque Regen from Drain Psyche when going from group to group. But the Regen fails when I'd really want it: against a lone AV.

 

For this reason I started eyeballing /dark for my next build. By my math, you should be able to hit the blaster Regen cap when built for recharge by stacking the buff over and over again. Am I missing something?

[Frosticus]

7 hours ago, Frosticus said:

It's my intention to test this out maybe tonight as I just picked it up on my rad/elec project blapper.

The recover/regen is auto upon casting and the kb rolls a tohit, but i'd like to try it out to see how effective it is. 

tested it out. it works well. fires the +rech without enemies. 

now the question is whether i want to add a KB>KD IO and get some acc in it for mitigation uses.

[natewest1987]

Just wanted to chime in in temporal healing... it’s kind of amazing.  I’m not at my computer right now but if I remember correctly I get about 118 absorption per tick, and when accelerates I think another 30 something.   With heal procs I heal up really quick as well.  That’s a lot more than cauterizing aura ever did for me lol 

[Sailboat]

"Martial: Reaction Time: Toggle, Type TempHP. 30ft Radius Slow, -Recharge. +40% Recharge (Self)

A strong one to be sure. Rather than -Dmg to enemies, this one gives you higher recharge speed yourself. That's right. Your Sustain is just over half a perma-haste all on its own."

 

Are you sure about that?  Currently running Martial Combat, Reaction Time, and seeing no bonus when the toggle is on.

[Hopeling]

A nice feature of Energize is that you don't need to slot it for recovery. It does need recharge, but on high-end builds it's perma from global bonuses alone. Getting full benefit from it for only 2-3 slots is a neat perk, and meshes well with Energy as the "I don't want to invest much in a secondary" secondary.

4 hours ago, Omnicron said:

By my math, you should be able to hit the blaster Regen cap when built for recharge by stacking the buff over and over again. Am I missing something?

I don't think it stacks.

[Frosticus]

1 hour ago, Sailboat said:

"Martial: Reaction Time: Toggle, Type TempHP. 30ft Radius Slow, -Recharge. +40% Recharge (Self)

A strong one to be sure. Rather than -Dmg to enemies, this one gives you higher recharge speed yourself. That's right. Your Sustain is just over half a perma-haste all on its own."

 

Are you sure about that?  Currently running Martial Combat, Reaction Time, and seeing no bonus when the toggle is on.

havent tried it but I think you get a  short rech bonus if you deactivate the toggle. 

[Seale]

54 minutes ago, Sailboat said:

"Martial: Reaction Time: Toggle, Type TempHP. 30ft Radius Slow, -Recharge. +40% Recharge (Self)

A strong one to be sure. Rather than -Dmg to enemies, this one gives you higher recharge speed yourself. That's right. Your Sustain is just over half a perma-haste all on its own."

 

Are you sure about that?  Currently running Martial Combat, Reaction Time, and seeing no bonus when the toggle is on.

well there are indeed some "paper theory" description of powers in that post, the recharge from it comes ONLY when you deactivate (or lose) the toggle for 10 seconds.... since the animation from it lack an alternative faster option, you are either bound to deactivate the power, cast it again (and stay in a 2 seconds animation rooting you on the ground) for the recovery/abs value, or just more normally ignore the recharge speed value.

 

All Absorb value from 

- Martial 

- Ice 

- Time 

- Plant 

are all the same (but dont work on the same way, for example you cant benefit from a clarion special effect with plant abs compared to the time one that it IS affected, both normal and the proc from chronos)

 

 

[Omnicron]

7 hours ago, Hopeling said:

I don't think it stacks.

Well I just got my /Dark up to 20 to test. You are correct, it does not stack.

 

Which sucks. Giving /Dark the ability to get Drain Psyche levels of regen/recovery after repeated recastings would give it a cool niche, worse than DP in normal crowd-to-crowd gameplay but able to sustain itself into an AV fight in a way that DP can't.

 

As it is it's just... bad.

[Galaxy Brain]

What sorts of procs can go into the absorb powers?

[Frostbiter]

They take heal sets and endurance modification sets, other enhancement sets are based on what the power does. For instance Frigid Protection also takes slow sets.

[Frosticus]

10 hours ago, Omnicron said:

Well I just got my /Dark up to 20 to test. You are correct, it does not stack.

 

Which sucks. Giving /Dark the ability to get Drain Psyche levels of regen/recovery after repeated recastings would give it a cool niche, worse than DP in normal crowd-to-crowd gameplay but able to sustain itself into an AV fight in a way that DP can't.

 

As it is it's just... bad.

yah I felt the same about force of thunder from /elec for a bit too. its utility is a bit better than the /dark one granted but if you more think of it as double stamina rather than some sort of health power then the powers are solid. a blaster with lots of endurance is pretty deadly. 

[oedipus_tex]

I've been meaning to ask how effectively procs like Defiant Barrage work in Cauterizing Aura. It's got a tiny radius (8ft) but do procs carry it the distance?

[Jeneki]

Dark's sustain also requires a single-target hit check, so 5% of the time you just don't get the buff.  That's the one thing I dislike on my darkity-dark disorientation blastroller.

 

 

Edited July 31, 2019 by Jeneki

[ScarySai2]

Drain Psyche, no contest.