HighRoller

Mostly, not wanting to shoot nets and glue at people. That's perfect for some concepts, like Frankenstyle, my former Vahzilok experiment comedy action guy. It's not so hot for my samurai-themed deadly archer. One approach I considered was taking TA and only taking snare arrow and flash arrow, but that's a pretty gutted power set. Another idea was going Empathy/Archery and defining Empathy as a non-powered leadership ability, using Maneuvers from Leadership to shift the build into more of a buffer. However, I realized I would much prefer having a different level 1 melee attack, Build Up, and so forth. I want to play the concept very aggressively. That led me to reflect on my dissatisfaction with EM for Natural blasters, which are fairly close mechanically but just don't scratch the right itch.

You know what's kind of weird? (Tangent alert) TA isn't much of a debuffing set. If anything, it looks more like a Blaster Secondary baby-control set.

I like Power Thrust and I like knockback. "Knock the guy across the room with a glowing punch" just doesn't scream Natural origin to me. Energy Manipulation is great for my towering robot with Energy Blast, or my dual pistol wielding vigilante who wears energized gauntlets. It's not so hot for a Natural Archery character, whom I would rather not assign Trick Arrow because they are supposed to be a deadly archer, not some wacky gadget-based character who shoots nets or oil slick arrows.

Seriously, what is the natural choice for an Archery blaster? "I shoot arrows at bad guys, and also...

... "I can energize my fists. And I like shooting people with arrows. Because."
... "I have ranged elemental powers but no blasting attack. And I like bows."
... "I like to use advanced cloaking devices, grenades, and a robot targeting drone with my bow."

The first power, which you will take on your Secondary, no choice, hurls guys around the room. Since it constitutes a good bit of your damage potential the first few levels, it's not very convenient to just tuck it away to the back of your tray and forget about it.

Power Boost "Greatly boosts the secondary effects of your powers. Your powers effects like Heals, Defense Buffs, Endurance Drains, Disorients, Holds, Immobilizes, Knockbacks and more, are all improved. The effects of Power Boost lasts a short while, and only the next couple of attacks will be boosted." ... In practical terms, it's a power that causes people to throw people even further with Power Thrust.

Although most of the attack powers Disorient, EM is a pretty poor choice if you don't like throwing people around the room.

It wouldn't be a cloaking device, it would be stealth. The cloaking device is a precedent.

What about something like Scare from Mental Manipulation?

Energy Manipulation is very glowy. Also, it has huge knockback effects. It also encourages a kind of in-your-face style that seems at odds with a Natural blaster fighting giant demons and robots. If you could just turn off the glowy, EM is probably what I would use as a default for the time being. Ideally, though, I think a stealth power (similar to Device's cloaking device) would be good, along with a greater emphasis on knockdown and disorients than flying KB. Mixing in a fear effect would be thematic, as with Mental Manipulation. It would be kind of mix-and-match, sort of a "Willpower" of Blaster Secondaries.

My tests suggest this happens any time you do a timed mission with a rescue, whether the rescued person is a custom or standard character, Person or statted. The only workaround I am aware of is to take off the timer.