ClawsandEffect

Well, I solo almost exclusively these days, so I guess I don't feel so bad then.

Then you probably should have picked a different primary. Electric's single target damage is better than....Spines, and that's about it. Every other available set has better single target potential.

Really? No other set has anything to offer except melee attacks? None? That's quite the generalization there.

Energy has 4 melee attacks out of 9 powers. That leaves you half the set to choose from if you don't want the melee attacks. Except Power Thrust, you're stuck with that. Power Boost, a power that boosts the secondary effects of you other powers, wouldn't an Ice blaster find that useful? Or Boost Range...hmmm, sounds useful for someone who wants to avoid melee, does it not? Conserve Power...stretches your endurance bar so you can blast longer before running out of endurance....sounds like something all blasters could use.

Fire gives you a lot of powers that you need to be in melee to use. In fact, with the exception of Ring of Fire pretty much the whole set requires you to be in melee. Your generalization actually fits this one.

Devices doesn't have a single melee attack in it. Not one. Even Taser has range to it. No one has ever built a Devices blapper.

Electric also requires you to spend a lot of time in melee, but out of that, only 3 are melee attacks (4 if you count Shocking Grasp as an attack, I consider it a hold)

Mental Manipulation also makes you spend time in melee. But what do you get in the set? Melee attacks? Nope, only 2 powers in it count as a melee attack. You get Drain Psyche, one of the most awesome powers blasters have ever been given. World of Confusion, a fairly crappy damage aura with a minor confuse built in. And of the 2 that count as a melee attack, one is Psychic Shockwave, one of the best PBAoE attacks in the game, on ANY AT.

Yes, Ice does give you options other than melee attacks, but so do other sets.

As far as the blapper playstyle goes:

A blaster that uses ALL of his powers will outdamage one that only uses half of them. A blaster that uses only ranged is only half a blaster. On the flip side, a pure blapper who only fights in melee is no better. A true blaster is a damage dealer....it doesn't make any difference at all whether they're dealing that damage from down the hall or 2 feet away.

I'm building an Ice/Electric blaster that will have his melee ability. I don't consider him a blapper....he's just a blaster that doesn't gimp his damage potential by skipping his hard hitting attacks. Especially with Ice as his primary, what possible danger could he be in punching an enemy that is frozen in a block of ice?

Dammit, and here I was trying to be different with my controller. Guess I need to pay more attention to what people are playing these days

I'm gonna need to see proof of this. In 4 years I have never seen an ice tank outdamage a scrapper that was built even halfway competently.

I'm calling you on it:

Prove your claims or don't make them. The AV and GM soloers all have video or screenshot proof of their accomplishments. So far I have seen no such thing from you.

You claim to be able to do things that are either highly improbable, or downright impossible. I'd like to see you PROVE that you did these things.

Screenshots and video are both easy to do, and shouldn't be beyond your capacity.

Thus far, you remind me of the kid that told me his Honda Civic could run a 9 second 1/4 mile, and refused to race me to prove it.

Care to prove you can do what you say you can?

This is true of scrappers and tanks, less true for brutes. With a full fury bar both do respectable damage, and that's how I usually use them. If my fury bar is full...chances are my end bar is not, so Dark Consumption is a good move to make there, becuase it both deals AoE damage and fills my end bar. Soul Drain I use as soon as my fury bar hits 75-80%, it deals decent damage and boosts my damage even more.

I know it's not relevant for the current discussion, but I thought I'd throw that out there. Werner is correct about those two powers as far as a scrapper is concerned, if you choose to try a DM brute, then my thoughts here will have more merit.

I have taken Confront on a PvE character before, but I had a good reason for doing so. I hit level 49 on an ITF and the main tank was a Shield Defense. I knew the autohit nictus would shred him, so I took Confront at 49 to keep it focused on me. A Dark Armor scrapper can handle the autohit's negative energy damage a LOT better than a Shield tank.

I burned a respec to get rid of it as soon as I could. It has it's uses, but 99.9% of scrappers are better off not taking it.

Sorry, I can't ignore this. It is a lie. An untruth. An outright, boldfaced, blatant falsehood.

There is no way a level 36 D3 is soloing AVs without using inspirations or vet powers. Especially with just SOs, which you seem to be saying you are slotted with.

AVs resist to-hit debuffs by 85% so you're debuffing by maybe 20% total between
Darkest night and all your blasts. If you have 1-3 end reductions in your powers you clearly aren't slotting for any defense bonuses.

It's just plain impossible with the way you said you are slotted. If you had said EBs or level 50 and IOed I might have given it the benefit of the doubt, but as it stands that claim is absolutely ludicrous.

Pics or it didn't happen. Take a demorecord video showing you performing this feat and I'll believe it. Until then I will remain firm in my belief that it is an outright lie.

Yes, if it hits them they are affected by the to-hit debuff, even if they are unaffected by the fear. Probably a good slotting choice there. IF I were to take Cloak of Fear I would likely slot it the same way.

I don't slot it for accuracy at all. It already has a higher base accuracy than most attacks, and I never use a nuke without Aim and Build Up, which pretty much gives me a 95% chance to hit just about anything. If I'm using SO's or generic IOs I go 3 dam, 3 rech.

That's if I even take the nuke. I skip it a lot of the time.

Actually they don't. That's why hoverblasting is so effective, NPCs can't do multiple things at once like player characters can. A player character can jump and queue up an attack in midair, an NPC can jump or queue up an attack, but not both. Their AI doesn't allow for it. They jump, and enter melee range, at which point their AI switches fom ranged mode to melee mode, but they leave melee range before their AI tells them to fire an attack.

There's a sweet spot above a mob just outside melee range, if you find it they will mill around beneath you trying to get into range for a melee attack, while being too close to enter ranged attack mode.

Kinda doubt that.

It may control better, but there is no defender that will ever outdamage a blaster.

My Rad/Sonic comes close, but still pales in comparison to any competently built and played blaster.

Your opinion is exctly that, an opinion. And in this case, it is not relevent to discussion at hand.

On topic:

Ice/Ice/Cold is one of the most survivable blaster combinations possible.

Ice Blast is very single target oriented, yet has the best nuke available to a blaster (I don't count Full Auto and Rain of Arrows when I say "nuke"), it slows the bejeezus out of them and does a crapton of damage. It also doesn't require line of sight, so you can fire it from around a corner and avoid agro. You can also stack Ice Storm and Blizzard for even more dame if you like.

As far as single target damage goes, Ice lags behind only Sonic and Fire.

And it already has a term for it...."blastroller"

It definitely gets awesome later on.

Ice is typed defense. At low levels you have smashing/lethal defense, which will help against the zombie slaps and the darts the humans shoot. It won't help at all against the zombie puke.

Killing speed means nothing if you can't survive the return fire.

If you can softcap a character without gimping anything else, why wouldn't you? You say your tanker kills fast, that's great. But how does he tank? Since, well, that's his job and all. Can he handle a +4/x8 spawn and keep them away from the squishies?

If my DB/WP could keep agro off a fire blaster, you should have no problem with a Shield Defense scrapper.

As Werner said, I have no problem with most things in the game....but defense debuffs make my BS/DA curl up into a little ball and hope they go away.

No, not really, he still has his resists and a monster heal to fall back on (812 HP from one target), but when that cascading defense failure starts in he goes from untouchable to very bruised and lacerated pretty quick.

Swords/Dark is a potent combo. I think I softcapped one cheaper than anyone else has, but I can't be sure. Not necessarily better, mind you, just cheaper.

The only things I have trouble with are: Nemesis, because Parry starts missing when they pop vengeance. Cimerorans, defense debuffs up the wazoo, every single Cimeroran you will encounter has a defense debuff of some kind. And last, believe it or not, I have trouble with extremely large groups of Council. When you have 17 guys all firing defense debuffing machine guns at you your defense disappears in a hurry.

I have occasional trouble with Carnies, but only when that end drain they do when they die tags me a few times in a row.

RWZ Challenge...no sweat.

AVs...depends on which one. Black Swan is a pushover, Mother Mayhem and Malaise are both chumps. Siege, Nightstar, and Marauder are a PAIN because of the lethal resistance they have. Oh, and that Chimaira guy? I forgot he was an AV until he didn't drop in a few seconds flat, piece of cake.

ITF.....ummm.....yeah. I can do it, but it gets painful for me if there's no tank to soak up some agro. *I* had to tank it one time...that sucked. TFs are no problem, even though I lose my softcapped defense on all but 4 of them.

PvP? Not even gonna go there, DA is arguably the worst secondary choice for PvP, and I'll just leave it at that.

Not a good farmer, mostly single target damage and I don't have a whole lot of recharge, so it's slow going. Steady, because I rarely die, but slow.

I used to have it on my main (I've respec'd the poor guy literally like 16 times). The only real benefit I ever got from it was before you could combine inspirations to make a wakie and I was on a TF. It was very useful for getting back into the fight without going to the hospital or my base.

Now that you CAN combine inspirations.....it's pretty much useless. I dropped it 5 respecs ago and haven't looked back.