Atomic_Toy_Guy

I usually skip crash nukes as well anymore. Reason? Because I usually take hover and I hate dropping from the sky when my nuke fires.

@Aggelakis

/mypurchases Doesn't help at all, it doesn't tell me how many points I used to buy the items. This is what I would need to know to perform a proper audit of my account. I can't go based off of what the store shows either because some of the items I bought on sale.

Oh well, I still feel like this whole system was slapped together and rushed out the door. The other unmentionable super hero themed game that went free before this one seems to have a much better handle on their market experience. To bad the game play in that game stinks.

@Aggelakis

Thank you for this, I am going to audit my account ASAP!!

Whats really shady is they don't give you any way to see a history of when you have spent points. I have been told that I have the correct amount of points on my account as well, but I would at least like someway to audit to make sure that they are right. I swear I haven't gotten any points on my account since this system went live. I haven't bothered to keep a detailed log of everything that I bought so I can't verify to be sure.

I find it amazing that to this day I can't convince a friend of mine that Energy is probably the best secondary for ranged blasters if not the best secondary for blasters in general. All he sees are the melee attacks and this makes him assume its a melee set. He still thinks Mental Manipulation is the best, although it is good, I've always felt that mental brings you into melee to take advantage of Drain Psyche and by entering melee you increase your odds of getting clobbered by a great deal. With those increased risks it completely negates any added benefit of drain psyche.

Actually I would think that Fire/Dark would be a safer combo to play. Fire other than the nuke doesn't have any business being in melee.

Dark/Energy is a combo that I am toying with the idea of creating as we speak. The idea of power boosted to-hit debuffs and power boosted Life Drain seems extremely appealing. I imagine that combo is going to be highly survivable and a great performer. Sure the Nuke is PBAOE, but the only other sets that have a true ranged nuke is Ice and Electric.

Electric has a staple attack that is PBAOE and is lacking in the single target department.

Ice/Energy would be a single target power house and you would get some extra mileage out of the slows with power boost. Though -Recharge powers are unaffected by enhancement so Power Boost has no effect there. It would just boost the -Movement Speed.

I have an Archery/Energy and its incredibly fun to play, though Power Boost doesn't effect much in this set other than the stun and Aim.

Fire/Energy good combo, but Power-Boost won't effect anything in your primary other than Aim.

I've heard great things about AR/Energy, but already have an AR/Dev at 50.

Actually now I can't wait to get home to roll up a Dark/Energy... Whee.

I wouldn't say that they wouldn't play well together. The only part that is going to hold you back is the fact that you won't have access to Aim or Build Up. I have a 50 AR devices blaster and my only complaint is no Aim or Build Up. If you can get over that then the pairing should actually work well enough.

I don't know why else anyone would say that it was a bad combo.

Web Grenade: Useful for -50% Recharge debuff.
Caltrops: Causes enemies to flee, fleeing enemies attack less.
Taser: Stun - Would stack with stun from Suppressive Fire ( No special ammo loaded, all special ammo's turn Suppressive Fire into a hold. )
Targeting Drone: Great perception bonus. Never be blinded by night widows again.
Smoke Grenade: Prevent extra aggro, minor to-hit debuff.
Cloaking Device: Combine this with Super Speed and you have full invis.
Trip Mine: Invis in to a mob lay one of these babies down and click Hail of Bullets for a nice 900 damage to the group.
Time Bomb: Garbage!
Gun Drone: Extra damage, something for mobs to focus on instead of you. Easy to prema & quick to cast. Whats not to like.

Though I think an even better choice would be a Dual Pistols/Traps corruptor. With DP/Traps you'll still do plenty of damage and you will be safer to boot. You'll have tools to bring down really hard targets and tools to increase your damage. Plus mez protection from FFG!!!

Primaries that are good for pure ranged.

Archery - Pure ranged
Energy Blast - Pure ranged
Assault Rifle - Pure ranged (No AIM)
Beam Rifle - Pure ranged
Ice Blast - Pure ranged
Fire Blast - Nuke is PBAOE
Psychic Blast - Nuke is PBAOE
Dark Blast - Nuke is PBAOE
Sonic Attack - Nuke is PBAOE

The secondaries I prefer for pure ranged characters is Energy or Devices.

Energy: The great thing about this secondary is there's not a ton of powers to take. But the ones you will take won't cost you a lot of slots and can be extremely useful to most primaries, power pools and epics.
Power Thrust - Knocks back enemies that make it to melee. Slots needed 2 Accuracy
Build Up - Available at LEVEL 4! Slots needed 2-3 Recharge
Conserve Power - Easy to use and useful endurance management tool. Slots needed 2-3 Recharge
Power Boost - Fantastic power that increases duration of mez's, secondary effects, healing, and defense powers. Slots needed 2-3 Recharge.
Boost Range - Easy to Perma. If you are looking for pure range this right here is why you chose this set. This will allow you to attack from much further away decreasing the ability of enemies actually making it to you alive. It also decreases the likely hood of being hit with AOE's. If you have cones they really shine with this power. Slots needed 2-3 Recharge.

I know most people look at energy and think they have to take the heavy hitting single target attacks. But as a pure ranged toon skip em' and save the slots and powers for things much more useful to a ranged character like Aid Self, Leadership, Fighting, Hover/Fly, etc.

Devices: This set lends it's self to a ranged play style as well but it does require more slots and doesn't do a whole lot to increase your damage output.
Web Grenade - Great immobilize with a powerful -Recharge debuff -50%.
Caltrops - Enemies that enter this will want to flee, if they are fleeing they aren't attacking you. It also slows them down from entering melee. Drawback is short range 20'.
Tazer - Nice stun 20' range.
Targeting Drone - Never be blinded by night widows again! Honestly in the modern game its not that useful for the accuracy buff due to how easy accuracy is to come by in set bonuses.
Smoke Grenade - Nice to avoid extra aggro from near by mobs. Also has a small accuracy debuff.
Cloaking Device - Stealth with out the movement penalty. Combine this with a freebird stealth IO and you are full invis.
Trip Mine/Time Bomb - Slow and tedious I usually skip these on all but solo builds then I might take Trip Mine.
Gun Drone - Currently being fixed so it can be cast from Hover and its now non-interruptable. Easy to perma. You'd be crazy if have devices and don't take this power these days.

I like devices well enough but I really do prefer Energy for pure ranged builds primarily due to Boost Range and Build Up.

Hopefully this helps!

A Dark/Energy pure ranged character would probably solo very well. Especially once you get the tentacles, those will keep all but bosses out of your face. Easily perma boost range, I would imagine this combo would be pretty safe and effective.

Oh yeah and if you are going to be soloing I wouldn't bother taking the nuke unless you plan on raising the difficulty to have more enemies.

Ice storm is a fantastic power, I wouldn't skip it at all.

It's probably a matter of needing to keep ahead of the group a bit so you can drop it as an alpha quickly just as everyone else gets to the mob.

I know I play an Archery blaster and I have to work pretty hard to stay ahead of my team. It takes a full 3 seconds for Rain of Arrows to animate and drop it's damage. So if I am not running ahead of the team my ROA ends up being wasted.

If ultimately it can't fit into your play style then go ahead and drop it, but it really is a fantastic power and with a tweak to your play style it really can be effective.

I have a BR/TA and it is nice on teams. Though I am quite partial to TA my self I love it solo or on teams. I have found that Beam Rifle on the other hand I only like to play on teams. For some reason Beam is really boring solo for me, but even paired with one other person it suddenly feels like it comes alive some how.

I think I do have it set to start with windows, but I don't see how that would have anything to do with it. The reason I say that is I can play the game, close it and try to relaunch it and the launcher locks up. I kill the process, launch the game again and it starts up as expected. I'll try changing the setting tonight and I'll follow up if the same symptom continues.

Another viable option that I promise won't be painful to level and will still sync up well with AR is Dark.. All Ranged, Stuff to keep enemies at range, fantastic heal and to top it all off it matures pretty early.

Doh.. Just realized you said no to dark in your original post. If it isn't a hard limit, it really would be a good combo.

Be a masochist and do Trick Arrow.

* 100% ranged.
* Oil Slick easily lit with flamethrower.
* Aggressive play style.

Sure it doesn't do a lot to keep a team or you alive, but its a great de-buff set. Once it matures, it really can be a thing of beauty.

Trust me time is not your problem.

Psi is your problem, that set is a low performer no matter how you shake it. Psi only shines against enemies that have weakness to it, which is rare. The other problem is when enemies resist psi, they resist it by a wide margin. This is more common in the high game with all the robots we have to deal with.

Would psi perform better with Kinetics, meh maybe. Anything is going to do more damage with Kinetics. Time is a stellar set and the combo you picked should do well as a team based support toon, but I wouldn't expect it to shine solo.

I can only gather you never spent a lot of time on hero side playing defenders. As if you had, and tried anything with Psi you would have known that Psi blast just isn't that great. I've always wondered why so many people were clamoring for corruptors to get Psi, because I have played it as a defender and as a blaster and neither one ever impressed me. In all honesty I would rather have electric blast over Psi any day, and I feel like you have to be a masochist to play Electric Blast.

Yeah this would be a lot more interesting if it didn't take a million years to stack desks to make multi level rooms like that. I refuse to do anything fancy with the base builder anymore until they get things fixed. Like the ability to just raise and lower the level of an object with a slider.

If I can just chime in here for a moment.

In my experience Ranged defense on a non-blapper blaster is better than Smashing lethal.

Why do you ask?

1.) If you have fly you only need stay further away than any melee attack will allow, which is trivial to do to say the least. 15ft tops in most cases.
2.) Most controls are going to be typed ranged, avoiding controls means you can attack longer, kill faster, and live longer.
3.) Ranged defense helps you avoid all attacks that are well ranged. Lots of high level content uses energy/fire/negative/psi many of which have no Smashing or Lethal component to them.

Lastly, the extra 9% resistance doesn't mean squat if you are taking double the amount of attacks due to the lack of Ranged Defense.