Frosticus

I very much disagree. A sonic blaster isn't all that far behind a non-domination mind dominator from a personal survivability standpoint. It is lower sure, but you also do a lot more damage depending on secondary.

The same thing that lets a mind dom cake walk solo content lets a sonic blaster do the same. And while dominate is better than screech, it isn't that much better at eliminating single targets

Nor is it brain science.

I'm of the opinion that if kin is actively speed boosting me, which is a rarity, I'll take that and not complain. If you can't keep yourself alive then quit.

Yes and no. Over enough time it approaches a number similar to 75% resistance, but fights never last that long, or the fights that do, the target has resistance to the effect.

It does nothing against the first string of attacks, which is generally all the time it takes to resolve a fight for a blaster be it their death or your own. It has moderate use against luts and high use against bosses imo provided you aren't just hard mezzing them to begin with.

I actually find the movement slow to be of more importance than the -rech. It easily keeps things at range and sets up easy use of rain of fire. Things just don't live long enough for the -rech to play a huge role, at least rarely to the point you are stacking the power.

Assuming you are 1 insp from softcap that gives you 20 mins of softcapped def. That will easily cover most missions. You should be able to get like 5 paper missions out of that load. Contacts don't even have to like you to sell purples, so attaining them between missions takes very little time.

If you did an analysis of the time investment required to fill up every 20 mins vs how long you have to sit at the market buying/crafting to hit softcap you could probably play for a long time before it made sense from a time standpoint to invest in the IO's.

Capacity plays a factor in the pre 40 game for sure, but most people don't push for softcap that early. It also plays a factor in high end content like RSF, but a "cheap and easy" build probably isn't gung ho for such tasks anyway.

But lets be honest, you probably aren't softcapping for $50M, it is likely a lot more than that, and you probably don't need to be softcapped the entire time you are playing, which makes insp an even better route to take.

FWIW, I'm not really being serious, but it is actually pretty true.

You'll have to use kick for the proc to do anything. If you are using kick then something has gone horribly wrong.

Maybe, maybe not. It probably falls within acceptable performance from the dev's point of view. It could be improved sure, but I wouldn't say it is a high priority compared to other powerset imbalances both positive and negative in nature.

The situation was even worse when EM used to be faster. It did everything MA does except waaaaaay better. It still does, but the flow of the set is terrible now so I guess that balances things out a bit.

Oh I know. I've conducted some pretty in depth analysis of sonic, mostly for defs/corrs mind you, but I have looked at blasters too.

I love the set for defs, like it for corrs, and find it unsatisfactory for blasters. The reason I dislike it for blasters isn't a dps one because as I mentioned (and you have followed up on) you can produce decent dps with just the t1 and 2, and if you throw in a secondary immob it is fine. If you mix in a high dpa melee attack it is very impressive.

I dislike it because I don't like playing a blaster that can't put things down quickly from range when that ability needs to be called upon (similar reason I don't play AR, or Dual Pistols on a blaster). That's a demand I don't put on my corrs/defs for the most part and as a result I deem sonic as excellent for them. Additionally, the higher debuff modifiers and extra mitigation generated from the debuff set I pair with it certainly helps those two AT's to get past the long-ish root times when compared to my favorite blast set - fire.

edit: that said, I'm looking at a buzzsaw sonic/em that chains shriek>scream>energy punch>repeat with lots of procs. The dps is actually really high and the endurance cost is quite low which leaves a lot of room in the build to push toward softcap s/l and get the necessary rech.

MA is fine in the sense that if you choose it you can kill things and look good while doing it.

From a pure numbers perspective DM is better in virtually every way including damage, damage type, utility, and secondary effects.

I'm not being negative. They won't make it do more damage than headsplitter and it isn't that far behind now.