Chazzmatazz

I find that most players who find AR damage disappointing are AR/Devs, because of the lack of Buildup. Yes, it really does make a giant difference in gameplay experience. Ice is an exceptional pairing, because it packs more mitigation into two powers (Shiver and Ice Patch) than most of the other secondaries (the whole sets). Does it fail to add much damage? Sure, but this is essentially a moot point as AR has a basically seamless AoE chain (especially if the Electric mastery APP is selected) on it's own, with Hasten running, and Ignite is ridiculously effective vs. immob'd enemies and any AV or fixed object, even given the long animation time. The synergy of ignite with Ice Patch is a thing to behold. A final point is that Chillblain is arguably the best teir 1 secondary attack in the blaster AT, with its capacity of being used even when mezzed, while putting stacks of -rech on whatever enemy managed to mezz you.

All this said, I prefer to play my AR/Ice (My Cold Dead Hands) and my other blasters primarily in teams, just for the pleasure of watching fountains of damage numbers emerge from the large groups that spawn. I find soloing with blasters to be a little tedious, as I have a strong preference for scrappers when soloing content.

Ahhhh. AR/Ice. Love indeed. I went AR/Ice/Munitions for the BU+LRM+FA+M30 Bunker-buster opening with My Cold Dead Hands. AR/En gets a lot of press with how Boost Range enhances the cones, but I think the availability and relative cheapness of Dam/Range HOs can enhance the range of the cones very effectively and really, do you want/need to be that far back? Shiver for blasters is ridiculous individual and more importantly team mitigation. Ice Patch is a terrific midgame tank assist, and works great with Ignite.

My AR/Ice was my 2nd 50 blaster.

My first was Pocahostess, an Arch/Ice/Electric. Why give up on the /awesomeness of /ice and why give up on a 60s rech. crashless nuke (which can now shoot over walls and around corners and that has Aim to go with BU!)? Do Arch/ice.

Just a tip. Big print=small substance. Best of luck in the 9th grade.

Subtitled Streams are here (if it isn't zone limited), as well as for myriad others.

Now you need to watch Samurai Champloo (Think Samurai Bebop).

/Ice has the best damage mitigation in any blaster secondary in the fewest powers in my experience (lvl 50 AR/Ice, Arch/Ice, and 48 Fire/Ice) AND has Build-up, which makes your AR AoEs really melt the baddies. Shiver is downright broken-good (base recharge of 12s vs 30s on the troller version) and is both solo-asset and under-recognized but greatly effective debuffer in teams. Also Chilblain is arguably the best overall offense/defense tier one out (and usable while mezzed with defiance). Ice Patch is either a life saver or a non-factor and is great in raids with Ignite. As for the range appeal of /Energy (with boost range), I find that at least in the late game the dam/range HOs are really quite reasonable and get my AR ranges quite nicely boosted (good Dam/range IOs too.) I took the Munitions pool for theme and for Body Armor (which hold the Steadfast protection uniques and Aegis unique, and LRM, which is a brutal combo with BU and Full Auto followup, pretty much takes out a whole ITF crystal spawn all on it's own (I suggest no acc in LRM as it will always be used with Buildup, and slots can go into straight dam/rech to max each in 4 slots). Use it!
A strength of /ice is that you can really make do quite nicely with only 4 of the powers (BU, Ice Patch, Chilblain and SHIVER). The hold is nice of course and the sleep is a good cheap purple set mule (and situational oh crap button). This frees you up to invest in the med pool (recommended)

Another voice for a D3. They control so much of the battlefield. Fearsome Stare on its own is usually enough to trivialize most PUG content. Toss a tar patch and watch badguys melt away. D3 is very chill.

Rad/Son is also a well-documented BEAST, especially as a force multiplier and hard-target tenderizer.

Movies
Akira- Started it all for me. Blew my mind in 1986 at the International Film series in a large lecture hall at CU-Boulder. I think I annoyed people talking about it so much.
Rurouni Kenshin Movie – Samurai X The Movie: Awesome,
Final Fantasy VII Advent Children: What it lacks in story diection it more than makes up for in technical and choreographic excellence (japanese dub is recomended)
Ghost in the Shell: Iconic, and powerful.
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
Metropolis: A beautiful adaptation of the sci-fi classic
Tekkon Kinkreet: ** ATTENTION ** ok, did I get your attention. Check this bad boy out! The art style grows on you very quickly and the characters are very well developed. The protagonists are a couple of homeless kids, fighting corrupt city development in their neighborhood, but that doesn't begin to hint at the action of the story.
Kiki’s Delivery Service: It's Miyazaki. 'Nuff said
Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door: A Bebop movie done right. Very Spike centric.
Blood: The Last Vampire. A short movie, that tells a small intense, gory story with great art.
Tokyo Godfathers – The Movie: A fun holiday film. Feel good. Fun characters.
Afro Samurai: Fun movie. Great art style. Sam Jackson doing fun voicework, though a bit over the top.
Afro Samurai Resurrection : Not as good as the first, but still a fun watch, w/ audacious action
Steamboy; Best seen on the biggest screen available. By the Akira director, Katsuhiro Ôtomo
Grave of the Fireflies: Whoa. Be ready for some serious stuff.
Spriggan Movie: A little talky at the end, but a great super-agent actioner. Clean, well produced.
Appleseed : CGI/cell hybrid animation, and it really works. Good story, great climax.
My Neighbor Totoro: One of Myazaki's weider ones in my opinion.
Ninja Scroll: Very violent, imaginative character design. A spearhead of ninja anime.
Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind:Miyazaki Hayao. One of the most laughably (in a good way) unflappable action-girl protagonists in anime. Fun stuff.
Spirited Away:Miyazaki Hayao's perfect film and my favorite piece of anime EVAR.
Jin Roh, the Wolf Brigade: Man. This one is heavy. Very good... but heavy. US dub is very well done.
Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea:Miyazaki Hayao. Recently in a theatrical release in the US. Fun kids story. The US release voice actors I think did a good job.
Paprika:WATCH THIS movie!. Seriously. click on the link. You want this.
Roujin Z: This is great. An odd story. Very poignant, with great humor, characters, art and ESCALATING action! Trailer Japanese audio is recommended.

Most of these can be streamed HERE btw.

Series:
My top 10: 50 eps or less.
Cowboy Bebop: Brilliant in so many ways.
Samurai Champloo: Shinichirô Watanabe's Bebop followup. Lightning strikes twice.
Avatar, the Last Airbender: It is great. One of the most polished series ever. Great writing, voicework, story, increasingly epic artwork and scale of action. And more fun than you have any right to expect from a Nickelodeon "kids show".
Last Exile: One of the best looking anime series I've seen. Huge airship battles, great dogfights, likeable cast. A unique vision.
R.O.D. the TV: Great characters. Great action. Paper-based martial arts! Very imaginative.
Fullmetal Panic: Hilarious! Teen super soldier goes to high school undercover, "fish out of water" thing. The English voice actors do a great job. Endearing characters, fun mecha action (not an emphasis), and di I mention funny?
Ghost in the Shell (all seasons, counting as one choice): Complex, compelling stories in an intriguing and very fleshed out cyberpunk setting. Great action, music, and production values. Fun quirky extras involving the bizarrely appealing Tachikomas (battle robots with goofy AI's)
Outlaw Star: Endearing characters, sweeping story, and audacious action. Interesting tech vs. magic thing going on too.
FLCL: 4 episodes of psychedelic mind-fornicating, that you will want to watch more than once. Yes, yES, YES!
Samurai 7: A very enjoyable and remarkably faithful sci-fi adaptation of Akira Kurasawa's The Seven Samurai. Trailer
Planetes: Opening. An unexpected gem. Very impressive animation. Great characters and setting, weaves an impressively rich story with no throwaway characters, and great human lessons.

Ok. That's eleven. (many viewable Here.

All of the above, get the Chazz's Anime-lover Seal of Awesomeness.

For myself, sometimes, when basic team effectiveness or survival is not in question, my buff allocation priority is determined by a simple "spread the love" philosophy, in particular with Adrenalin Boost which is a fun magnifier that I like to try and give to as many on the team over the course of a mission/TF as possible. Stone tanks dig it of course, but so do trollers with long-recharge AoEs and nuking blasters (and recently shield and Electric melee chars). Some people clearly recognize when they've been the go-ahead to go extra gonzo and some do not. The ones who turn things "up to 11" tend to get more repeat doses than ones who maintain their status quo playstyle.

Builds aren't special. Players are. A team of good players doesn't give a crap what you bring. Good players take whatever pri/sec they choose and leverage the strengths of the sets to make the build perform at a high level. By focusing on task-specific optimization, you are starting out self-handicapped.

To give you real advice for maxxing out your effectiveness in running ITFs, develop a reputation as a good player (on your server globals), don't flinch from the star, develop good ability to fill teams quickly and without drama, make sure everyone on the team understands the general routine and then 'release the hounds'.

I was on that AR ITF on Liberty, running My Cold Dead Hands, AR/Ice (Shiver ftw!) Things basically just fell down (really fast) as 3+ Full Autos slammed into each spawn. Sure there were a few deaths and Rom was a little tricky until we came up with some discipline, but it was still basically a steamroller.

I'll run an all AR ITF anytime.

Global is: @Yeti Gone Bad

Hero-Con preview of (among other things) a blaster (or corruptor) using Dual Pistols on the new Going Rogue graphics engine. The tasty stuff starts at 22:00.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SItM3OLqb5w

I think an across the board 10% minion crit chance (maybe 15 for Eagle Claw), would be a thematic and subtle boost to the set.

EMP is great, even without Powerboost. Slotted up well, you are looking at a 50+sec hold usable every 2-ish minutes. That is awesome. That is about a 40% share of hard lockdown. With VG, and Stalagmites, you have pretty much on-demand AoE hard control. Use it to control aggressively. Sure its a great panic button, but I think that sells it short.

Thank you for the correction. Is that from the wedding pack? I tend to buy every theme booster pack made available.

I think the vet rewards are, overall awesome and a great QoL (mission transporter, Assemble the team) element of this game. Getting Sands of Mu and the frickin' Nemesis staff/Blackwand really opens up the solo game for a lot of damage-light builds, and the powers both look sweet. Costume rewards are appreciated and delivered pretty quickly. The 60 month reward is likewise a nice perk that helps the early levels roll more satisfyingly, but the vet biggies to me are Sands and the Nem Staff (pow!). That was a game changer.

(the Recluse-buffing ones). By FF troller or def?

Buffing comprehensively and playing other elements of the FF set should leave you with an enormous amount of free time. Non-blasting defenders, outside of PvP, are slackin' (imo). Defenders are force multipliers (mostly) and their secondary adds to the base force to be multiplied. Playing a defender with the same role-rigidity you learned in WoW is really selling the CoH game designers short.