Honor_NA

Actually, I stopped playing my archer, despite it being a great Primary, because I was so bored with the limited animation and effects. It didn't help that the sound effects for it are so subtle, either.

Don't get me wrong, I think Archery is great as-is, but just not for me. (I did get annoyed on some bigger teams when other players would ask me if I was participating in the combat because they couldn't tell I was shooting my arrows with all of the other effects going on.)

While I like the over-the-top animation and effects for Dual Pistols, I can completely understand if someone just wanted them to be more like the Mastermind versions as far as looks go.

I just wish Dual Pistols performed as well as Archery. Replacing Aim with Swap Ammo seems almost a cruel trade off. Even after 20 levels I can't really see any major difference no matter what element I choose. (Except for the stun/hold of course.) For how little it adds, it should have just been an inherent power given at lvl 6 without taking up a power choice.

If they could do alternate animations for Super Strength, I don't think it would be too much of a stretch for them to do the same thing for other sets.

I had the same curiosity about Elec/Fire, so I tried one out.

The damage from Fire is amazing, which helps with Elec's low damage output- BUT, the DoTs really hurt the usefulness of Static Field. I noticed that the melee DoT practically made the target immune to the renewing sleep effect (with some random instances where they would fall asleep for less than a second in the middle of the DoT, which did prevent an attack from occurring sometimes).

In addition to the long DoT on the melee attack there is also Combustion (which I did not get high enough to test) that is also a long DoT, but on everyone around you- which seems like it would just cancel Static Field altogether.

Static Field is just one power, but I think it is one of the best powers in the set. The renewing sleep has saved my bacon more than I can count (on my Elec/Earth).

I didn't play much past 14 with the Elec/Fire, so maybe other powers in the Elec set compensate for the poor mix of Fire DoTs and Static Field, but once I switched to /Earth things went a lot smoother and faster, despite the lower damage from /Earth.

I forgot to ask a question in my last post.

I am trying to decide if I should go with Earth or Psi as a replacement for Fire.

I've already gotten a Psi to 50, though, and I like the idea of Earth, but I am concerned that there will be a big difference in damage. Does Earth hit hard enough to make up for being mostly smashing damage?

What else are people pairing with Elec/ and why? (Besides thematic reasons, of course.)

I knew the DoTs would cause a problem, but I was trying to figure out if they actually prevented the Static Field from working at all when they were active.

I decided to figure it out for myself so I got my Elec/Fire up to lvl 12 and ran around using the Static Field on random mobs, then hitting one of them with Incinerate, which has a long and rapid DoT.

What I found is that it doesn't cancel the Static Field's renewing sleep effect. Instead it becomes more random with that spawn. As the DoT is burning the target I found that the sleep will still interrupt them once in a while, but only for a moment. That moment is long enough though to prevent them from making an attack after their initial attack for being woken up in the first place. This isn't consistent though, as sometimes they will just stay awake during the DoT. (Maybe this has to do with how often the Static Field tries to put them back to sleep.)

I would say that Incinerate, being single target, doesn't cause enough of a negative effect on Static Field to be a problem, since it is expected that you are going to be killing that spawn as soon as possible anyway. (And you can always mez that spawn with other abilities if needed.)

However, I am not high enough level to see how Combustion works on Static Field. From my experiment, though, I would say that it would be a bad thing to use, as the DoT causes too much interference with the renewing sleep in a group setting. One guy who only randomly falls back asleep is one thing, the entire mob is another.

Has anyone tried out Elec/Fire on a Dom yet? I am really curious about trying one, but I am worried that Combustion and Incinerate (among the other smaller DoTs) would completely cancel out the power of Static Field, which is one of the powers I am most excited about in the new set.

Does anyone know how those powers interact?

If Fire turns out to just not work with Electricity, then what would be a good suggestion to go with it instead? I'd like a set that produced high damage (especially AoE) to make up for Electricity's low damage output.

Thank you, everyone, for the great advice. I've decided on Ice/Dark, and so far (only lvl 4) I am enjoying it.

My slotting urges are pure Blaster, so it will be a challenge for me to remember that I have a totally different role here as a Tanker. I am looking forward to figuring out my best slotting in a new archetype setting.

After over five years of playing in the City, I am finally making my first Tanker. I am usually the Blaster or Controller, but I've decided that I want one of each archetype at 50 heroside.

I've always wanted to try the Ice primary (despite the very mixed opinions I've read here about it.) I just like the way it looks, and I actually like Chilling Embrace on my Rad/Ice Blaster.

At first, I was going to go with /Fire, since I always enjoy having as many AoE's as possible, but then I realized that /Dark has -ToHit, so I thought that might combo well with Ice/.

Does anyone have experience with that? Does -ToHit work with a defense set, or is there some rule that prevents that? Having very little experience at all with defenses, damage resists and so on (except for the fact that a dead target is the best defense in the game -sorry, bad Blaster joke) I have no idea how to get the most out of Ice/.

I'd still like to be able to do some damage for those times that I am playing alone, so does /Dark hit pretty hard? Any particular reasons to play it or avoid it? (I've the same questions for /Fire as well.)

One last Ice/ question. Does it need the Fighting Pool, or can I Tank without it?

I hope I didn't ask too many questions here.