Miladys_Knight

In my experience its a wonderful controller secondary and a lousy defender primary. That's the long and short of it. I think the difference is that having a control primary gives you long enough to layer on the TA powers. For a defender you have to get your survivability somewhere other than your primary which, for a defender set, is admittedly weird.

I think one of the real knife edge balance issues is that buffing TA as a defender primary may make the carry over to controllers way over powered.

I really like my Earth/TA, my Plant/TA, and my Fire/TA but I can't stand to play my TA/A defender anymore and it was one of my concept toons. Actually a tribute toon to one of my deceased friends. Never got it to 50 and haven't played it for over 1000 days. I had the Plant/TA out a week ago and all 3 of the controllers are level 50.

Yes I did. It's actually just the reverse of what you seem to imagine. Weak powersets require broken tactics just to be subpar.

Psi blasts travel so slowly you can outrun them with SO slotted sprint. If you aren't stealthed and have the misfortune to be less than 80 feet from the mobs when you attack, they can agro, and alpha strike and kill you before your first attack lands, let alone does damage.

The only thing that made it survivable for defenders was the extra range. The stripped down version that blasters got is a joke.

I've heard of it. It's kind of a bottom shelf tactic for a power set you bought offa some guy that you know from the Pawn shop...... It's similar to bringing a sword to a gun fight.

Here is an "El-Cheapo Slap Dash Build I threw together.

The powers aren't in any particular order they are just the ones that I would take.

I like to have 1 melee attack in case something manages to get in my face. You can substitute Moonbeam slotted with Thunderstrike for Ice sword.

You can also substitute the frankenslotting in Life drain for a set of Thunderstrike.

Doing either of those things will put you at the effective softcap to ranged attacks with your defense, set bonuses, and to Hit debuffs against even cons, if you open with Umbral and follow up immediately with Tenebrous Tentacles.

The build as is, is a couple % under the softcap for ranged including the debuff values. 4 A merits will get you the Numina's and the Miracle uniques. You can pick those up at minimum levels if you run a few tips while leveling up.

The rest of the stuff you can get pretty easily by just rolling 10-20 thousand tickets worth (that's filling up on tickets twice, a matter of 3-6ish hours with this toon while it's SO'd if you don't have a ticket farmer to use) of bronze in the 30-34 range. You should be able to roll most of what you need and then sell your surplus to buy the rest.

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.952
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

El-Cheapo Slap Dash: Level 50 Magic Blaster
Primary Power Set: Dark Blast
Secondary Power Set: Ice Manipulation
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Concealment
Ancillary Pool: Electrical Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Dark Blast -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(3), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(3), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(5), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(5), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(7)
Level 1: Chilblain -- Enf'dOp-Acc/Immob/Rchg(A), Enf'dOp-Acc/Immob(39)
Level 2: Gloom -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(7), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(9), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(9), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(11), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(11)
Level 4: Umbral Torrent -- Det'tn-Acc/Dmg(A), Det'tn-Dmg/Rchg(15), Det'tn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(15), Det'tn-Dmg/EndRdx(17), SipInsght-ToHitDeb/EndRdx/Rchg(17), FrcFbk-Rechg%(19)
Level 6: Aim -- AdjTgt-Rchg(A), AdjTgt-ToHit/Rchg(19), RechRdx-I(21)
Level 8: Ice Sword -- Mako-Acc/Dmg(A), Mako-Dmg/EndRdx(21), Mako-Dmg/Rchg(23), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(23), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(25), Mako-Dam%(25)
Level 10: Boxing -- Empty(A)
Level 12: Tenebrous Tentacles -- Det'tn-Acc/Dmg(A), Det'tn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(27), Det'tn-Dmg/EndRdx/Rng(27), Det'tn-Dmg/Rng(29), Enf'dOp-Immob/Rng(29), Enf'dOp-Acc/Immob/Rchg(31)
Level 14: Tough -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), RctvArm-ResDam(31), RctvArm-EndRdx(31), S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(33), S'fstPrt-ResKB(33)
Level 16: Build Up -- AdjTgt-Rchg(A), AdjTgt-ToHit/Rchg(33), RechRdx-I(34)
Level 18: Abyssal Gaze -- Lock-Acc/Hold(A), Lock-Acc/Rchg(34), Lock-Rchg/Hold(34), Lock-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(36), Lock-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(36), Lock-%Hold(36)
Level 20: Weave -- RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(A), GftotA-Def/EndRdx(37), S'dpty-Def/EndRdx(37), Ksmt-Def/EndRdx(37)
Level 22: Combat Jumping -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(39)
Level 24: Super Speed -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 26: Life Drain -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(39), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(40), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(40), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(40), Dct'dW-Heal(42)
Level 28: Shiver -- TmpRdns-Acc/Slow(A), TmpRdns-Acc/EndRdx(42), TmpRdns-EndRdx/Rchg/Slow(42), TmpRdns-Rng/Slow(43)
Level 30: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(43), RechRdx-I(43)
Level 32: Stealth -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 35: Invisibility -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 38: Static Discharge -- Det'tn-Acc/Dmg(A), Det'tn-Dmg/Rchg(45), Det'tn-Dmg/Rng(45), Det'tn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(45), Det'tn-Dmg/EndRdx/Rng(46)
Level 41: Shocking Bolt -- Lock-Acc/Hold(A), Lock-Acc/Rchg(46), Lock-Rchg/Hold(46), Lock-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(48), Lock-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(48), Lock-%Hold(50)
Level 44: Charged Armor -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), RctvArm-ResDam(48), RctvArm-EndRdx(50), TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(50)
Level 47: Grant Invisibility -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 49: Phase Shift -- RechRdx-I(A)
------------
Level 2: Swift -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Health -- Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(A), Mrcl-Rcvry+(13)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(13)
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Defiance
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run

Let me jog your elbow again and jog the elbow of most of the rest of the posters here.

Your issue is not damage output, your real issue is surviving long enough to utilize that output.

What are blaster issues?

1) a lack of mez protection. Defiance just does NOT cut the mustard here. A mezzed blaster is a dead blaster. Since you can't get real mez protection from any blaster power sets your inspiration tray is the answer.

2) lack of mitigation from Defense or Resistances. You can take an Epic shield late in your career and you can take Tough, Weave, and Manuevers. Without any set bonuses the best you are going to be able to do is 11ish% defense and 50% resistance to Smash/Lethal. That's barely a 50% increase in survivability and even then only against Smash/Lethal Damage. That means that if you can survive against 3 mobs with out the defense you can now have the same level of survival against ~7 mobs that do exclusively Smash/Lethal damage. That's not much of an increase and the endurance cost is huge.

3) lack of a self heal, especially one that is non-interruptible. The answer here is taking Aid Self which requires 1 additional power that provides you no benefit.

4) lack of ability to keep large numbers of mobs at range. This means that you have to take hover and watch your position indoors.

5) lack of the ability to mitigate the alpha strike.

For secondary power sets Devices is the safest of all of them. Devices can completely eliminate all of the above concerns. The issue with devices is the trade off of speed for safety is blown far out of proportion. Since devices won't fit your concept this is also out.

The second safest secondary set is /Ice. It has one benefit that /Mental lacks, you don't have to go into melee range for any length of time to get the most mitigation out of it.

/Ice is a partial answer to item 2 and 4 above. The -rech in the /Ice powers is almost like having extra resistance to all damage types because you can reduce the amount of incoming damage per unit time. The slow in the /Ice powers means that the mobs take a long time to reach melee range.

There is only 1 primary power set that provides the largest number of solutions to blaster's inherent weaknesses. That is Dark Blast.

No power set does any thing to help with item 1 the only answer is break frees.

Item 2 is mitigated by the to hit debuff in the dark powers. If you use Tenebrous Tentacles and Umbral Torrent you debuff the entire spawn by 10.5% that's as good as the most defense you can get with pool powers and SOs but you are doing damage to the spawn at the same time.

Item 3 is mitigated by Life Drain. It has decent range, does really good damage, is non-interrutible, and doesn't waste a power pick.

Item 4 is resolved handily by Tenebrous Tentacles and Chilblain, throw in Shiver and you have this problem locked down.

Item 5 is best handled by Stealth + Umbral Torrent. The Knockback mitigates the immediate Alpha and by the time the spawn can use it's opening attacks it has been hit debuffed by 10.5% (or more if you slotted some Hit Debuff) plus any defense you have from pool toggle powers. If you have the ones mentioned above you'll have doubled your survival against all damage types and tripled it vs Smash/Lethal.

The combination you want is Dark/Ice. It has decent AoE damage, can be utilized entirely at range with out gimping yourself, and has the best usable mitigation of all blaster combinations in the game without sacrificing much, if any, kill speed.

Please try it before you frustrate yourself again with all of the other high damage, low survivability options.

Actually Blue the problem may be that you don't understand the blaster (or blapper) playstyle. That's not a bad thing it just takes practice.

My main is an Energy/Energy/Force Blapper. My primary build is recharge focused and I play in Melee range most of the time. I only run about 7% total defense and I typically out survive my brute and scrapper teammates.

A lot of people will tell you that for a blaster range = defense but that's not entirely true. A blaster's best defense is positional awareness and the inspiration tray. Every spawn you are preparing to attack should have 3-4 seconds worth of pre-attack assessment.

You should identify the mezzers, You'll want to take them out quickly or if there are multiple mezzers you'll want to use a breakfree proactively.

What is the terrain like? Are you up on a platform with twice the amount of mobs that you can handle? If that's the case you can KB half the spawn off the platform and destroy the other half while the KB'd half try to get back on the platform.

Is there a convenient wall or obstacle? If so you can hide behind it, jump up and unleash an AoE, jump again and unleash another and have all the minions killed before they get to your hidey hole leaving a few lieuts to deal with.

Have an AoE slow power like shiver and a corridor with a corner? You can split the spawn again. Cast shiver on the front half of the spawn, throw in an AoE and duck around the corner. The back half of the spawn will pass the massively slowed front half and your AoE may be recharged again and or your slow may be recharged again. Slow the other half of the spawn and destroy it and about that time the first half of the spawn will show up for you to likewise destroy.

Use your inspiration tray. With lots of recharge you can pop 4 small purples and just waylay on stuff. If you are fighting at the 6-8 player level and have decent AoE and recharge your inspiration tray will fill faster than you can empty it. Just combine up what you can't use into what you want to use.

My main that I was talking about has slotted the ranged AoE attacks FOR KB. On 6-8 players settings Energy Torrent followed by Explosive Blast will reduce what is standing in my vicinity to 2 or 3 mobs, Power Thrust will reduce that by 1 further. Energy Punch and Bone Smasher can take out a mob and by that time Energy Torrent and Explosive Blast are recharged again and I can repeat the process. Yeah my AoEs do about 60% of the damage but I don't need them to be 100% I need them for the KB. About the 3rd or 4th time around all the minions are dead or running off and it's clean up time.

If I get in trouble I have Personal Force Field, Force of Nature, Eye of the Magus, and Phase Shift (you can have Phase shift at level 20) I can use to get out of a tricky or sticky spot. PFF or Phase Shift plus Aid Self fixes me up while the mobs waste their time.

That is the kind of stuff you need to keep in mind to get to level 50 so that you can uber yourself out with a full IO set build and incarnate yourself to the hilt.

One other thing to keep in mind is that MOST mobs have only 1 or 2 ranged attacks and those ranged attacks do roughly 60% of the damage of melee attacks. If you can keep them out of melee range they will only be able to use part of their damage powers and the weakest ones at that. You can handle 2-3 players worth of mobs if you can keep them out of melee range.

There are a couple of power sets that will allow you to accomplish this so you can learn HOW to be a blaster.

Dark/ gives you Tenebrous Tentacles that will allow you to keep a spawn immobilized and at range, Umbral Torrent will allow you to pile them all into a corner or against a convenient object so you can maximize your AoEs, Life Drain will allow you to heal the damage that is getting you from the mob's ranged attacks.

/Ice gives you shiver which can slow the spawn to a crawl. You can easily fight in retrograde and keep the spawn at range.

Hover will keep a spawn at range on open or outdoor maps.

My recommendation for a starter blaster to learn on would be Dark/Ice. Once you master the techniques of surviving as a blaster you could go Energy/Ice to slow the spawn and knock them away when they get too close or you could go with Dark/Energy to immobilize them and increase the range of your immobilize.

One of the highest mitigation secondaries for blasters is /Devices it gets a (deservedly) bad rap though because it takes 4 to 5 times the amount of set up that other blasters require to get that safety. The pay off isn't really worth the time investment though it is an interesting secondary if you have the inclination.

I'll close by echoing Arcanaville and recommend that you may also be happy soloing a Sonic blaster especially if you pair it with Ice. You can use stacking sleeps and slows and be extremely safe.

At level 18 you can open with Siren's Song, move into melee with Chilling Embrace, select a target and use Chillblain on it, kill it with single target damage, repeat.

At level 26 you can substitute Screech for Chillblain. The stunned mob will slowly wobble toward you and you can smack it with Ice Sword.

At level 28 you can respec out of Chilling Embrace and use Shiver instead. You can stay at range from this point on still using Screech to have the mobs drunkenly and slowly stagger toward you.

Level 32 gives you Dreadful Wail.

Level 35 gives you Freezing Touch, a melee range hold.

Level 38 gives you Frozen Aura, a mag 2 stackable PBAoE sleep (it has no damage component)

You can Sirens, jump in and Frozen Aura, this will sleep even Bosses, Amplify + Build up + Dreadful Wail will kill the spawn. 5% of every thing you attack is always missed but that's no big deal since it will still be asleep long after the end crash wears off.

A later game AoE chain that you can use to speed up your kills is Sirens, then use your single target attack chain while Sirens recharges, just as it recharges you can Shiver, Shockwave, Howl, Sirens and take virtually no damage.

Playing a blaster is an on the edge thrill and there is none better than when you have the experience to pull it off without being defeated.

/e Scratches head and wonders if that is innuendo, double entendre, risqué or something even more arcane and/or bizarre......

If you go dark colors for /Mental, you can do the same type of thing pairing Dark Blast/Mental/Elec. You get 4 cones (T_T needs some range in it and Umbral is not as wide as I'd like it. You can punch the middle out of the spawn and leave the edges if you aren't playing in the range sweet spot) that can be made to work well together. You get 3 exotic damage types (Dark, Psi, Energy).

It is a sub par set on paper AND in practice. You have to avoid not only Robots and Carnies but any group that is mez heavy, unless you are playing exclusively on 1 player settings. Not only is having so little AoE a pain but having projectiles that you can out run with slotted up sprint means that the mobs are notified long before they take any damage.

My long deleted Psi blaster used more break frees than any another blaster I played. Hover is just about a must as a travel power and anything that can apply -fly along with mez (like arachnos) means a trip to the hosp. At least now you can buy break frees at the hospitals. At the time I was trying to level up a psi blaster that wasn't an option and I spent more time returning to the missions from the hospital than any other blaster I've played.

The shadow shard is bad for a psi blaster too. The only time I had any thing that resembled normal blaster performance was when I was fighting Clocks, Family, Council and Romans. If you want to experience all the content in the game this is not the primary to play.

It's an excellent concept. My Ice/Rad controller and Ice/Earth Dominator do that kind of -rech. You just have to be able to splash the Alpha strike or Splash enough of it to survive and then heal/regen to make the tactic work.

I had asked Castle about that at one time. I was told that Triumphant Insult was the culprit. The proc lowered the stun protection of the toon that slotted it.

In typical dev style they made taunt sets not able to be slotted into taunt auras AND they turned off the proc in ALL taunt powers. The Triumphant proc does nothing except use up a slot to no advantage (unless your goal is the 3 slot set bonus)

This squared