OVWyx_EU

Just checked and I wont be around.

Ah well, maybe another time.

I'd like 'em for Wyx or Wyxie too, but I'm going to the in-laws this weekend and I'm not sure if I'm going on Friday night or Saturday morning.

Will have to have a word with Fell, but I suspect it might be Friday.

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Hi, welcome to the blaster boards etc. few pointers before I even read your thread

1. read the other threads already here
2. dont type "plz", people prefer "pls" if you have to abbreviate as there are actually esses (S) in it
3. not sure what the "blasters archetypes" part is about :s ??if you meant to have an apostrophe in "blasters" or not then there is still only one archetype called blaster, I think, though, that you were talkin about sets within the archetype, this may help you avoid confusion later on

Plight

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That really cracked me up, considering one of the very first things I thought when I looked at the forums again after resubscribing was "Wow, Plight found a dictionary, his posts actually make some sense now".

I pulled this off one of the lasts threads I posted on before taking a little break.

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brawl, ROFL, i know ur not joking weasel, but sheesh, have u even seen the melee attack damage of blasters?

other than that, what they said, especially Wyx, and the comments about using the 500% turn speed option (i use like 650%), use ctrl+tab to target near enemies, use follow, use range if theres no need to run to them, dont think the melees are slow, they have good activation times imo, if u feel u can then slot swift or such like (on test my blapper runs perma sprint, combat jumping, has swift and hurdle (not health) and moves very well in the air). if u happen to b elec primary get the drains in, or ice use the stuns etc, Aoe control 1st is a good idea, if ur energy primary then a radial AoE KB is prolly the best thing u have so aim to one side of the mob (assuming the mob is big enough to warrant it and not just purepwnage).

other than that go see duolos or del on union, or myslef or captain freon on defiant, win.

Plight

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Good to see you're still kicking around.

On topic, I completely agree with you about Air Superiority being under-rated. It's an extremely useful power on a lot of blaster builds, and not just in PvP.

But for some people efficiency is fun - it depends what you build for.

One thing I'd add to the other comments:

The build that was linked to is a high level build, and the enhancements used are put in with certain powers in mind, particularly stamina and conserve power which help a lot with endurance.

Prior to having at least stamina at level 20, you will probably need to slot endurance reducers in at least some of your attacks, or you will have serious problems with running out of endurance over the space of a fight.

On my lower level blasters on single target attacks I tend to slot two accuracy enhancements (as missing is a huge waste of endurance, obviously), then one endurance reducer, then start adding damage in. On AOEs I tend to slot one accuracy and one endurance reducer. I will also put at least a couple of recharges in aim and build up quite early on, as the damage boost from those is comparatively large at lower level when you don't have the best enhancements available. I find this makes my blasters a lot more fun and effective at low level.

Myself and Mystic both enjoyed it - it was a fun team to play the controllers with.

I quite like the look of that build, Okton, but I think you're right about the endurance issues. I think you could solve them without actually changing the increase attack rates in your attacks for end reducers, though.

I personally wouldn't use chilling embrace - there's a lot of other slow potential in the build anyway, and as you say, endurance can be an issue. In addition in mele you already have ice patch and freezing touch, to deal with anything that closes you. I'd favour keeping those recharges in the attacks and losing rather than having a toggle which is probably only of minimal use and having to slow down attack rate.

If I was going to put a to hit buff in aim or build up (I don't, but I've thought about it at times), I'd put it in build up, as the to hit boost on that is lower (62.5% against aim's 100%) and alternate them which, with two accuracy enhancements in all powers, will give you extremely good chance to hit. Consistantly high accuracy will obviously save you endurance over a fight, particularly in small teams or solo.

I'd put an endurance reducer in CJ not a jump, it's not a particularly high end usage toggle really, but it all helps with ice/ice.

Again from an endurance point of view, I'd put an end reducer in Shiver, it's usage is quite high, and you could easily lose the range enhancer (you're no nearer to use it than you would be for ice bolt anyway) or possibly the recharge - it's a great power but given it's very long animation time do you want to be using it too often?

I like the two recharges in Ice Patch (the very slight overlap I find gives a useful safety margin) and always use two, despite most people saying all you really need is one.

I like having Bitter Freeze Ray, I don't slot it heavily as I use it as an opener only due to the long animation time, but I find the ability to hold a boss from range very useful.

If you're taking the leaping pool anyway, perhaps swift would be a better alternative to hurdle from the fitness pool?

Blizzard has extremely high base accuracy, it really doesn't need an enhancement for that. I'd replace that with either a further recharge, or an enhance slow. You could also perhaps add a further slow in to ice storm, giving you several ranged powers then with a good slow down capability which could accomodate the loss of the toggle.

Edit: Comments were really badly ordered.

Re: Mele on an Ice/Ice/Cold blaster.

You have ice patch which you can pull on to, 2 ranged single target holds, and 2 good slows, plus the extra slow effects from attacks of course. You have the perfect sets to incapacitate hostiles from range, then close them once they're where you want them to be to use mele attacks.

With the possible exception of a good end drain/hold based elec build, there are few blasters safer for going in to mele.

Ice Sword makes soloing bosses a fair bit quicker in my experience.

I personally use the leaping pool on mine rather than hover, I haven't used hover and enjoyed it since ED, I still find it too slow. I also find it inconvenient to keep dropping out for Ice Patch, but that's a matter of personal preference.

Ice Blast, Bitter Ice Blast and Ice Bolt are really the core ranged attack chain on an Ice Blaster, I would six slot the lot.

I have yet to be sold on Frozen Armour, I really don't think it's particularly good (my ice blasters will generally fight mobs significantly higher level than them, in which case the defence offered from Frozen Armour is fairly minimal), the set offers a lot of other good powers to choose from, and you can get round the lack of a shield quite easily with the amount of control available.

Sometimes taking out anchors is unavoidable quite frankly. In mele, particularly with dark, although to a lesser degree with rad in a busy tightly packed group, it's virtually impossible to see exactly which one has the debuff on when there's a lot going on.

I also often find people put them on targets that I really need to take out first anyway (bosses, things that do status effects, sappers etc.). When I'm playing my /rad controller I tend to go for luitenents, except in very AOE heavy groups when I may use a boss, and avoid using void stalkers or anything else that's likely to be targetted first.

Ultimately if I have to recast them it doesn't particularly bother me as a general rule - if a team is having problems I may say something but normally if a team is having problems things are quite out of control and there's a lot of stuff out of the debuffs anyway. The only thing that genuinely annoys me with my rad is if someone with knockback appears to be seeing how far they can bounce one accross a busy room.

Yeah, I have a Fire/Ice blaster in range that hasn't done Manticore yet too but I figured the controller would probably be better with that team

I assume we'll do it at the top end of the level range and SK up the three lowest level characters to get round the fairly wide level split?

Wouldn't mind doing this TF with Wyxicle, my Ice/Rad controller - she'll be level 30 by Sunday.

I wouldn't take cold mastery with that build, I'd take force, flame or electricity.

Give yourself a ranged hold and/or make yourself tougher.

I use Cold Mastery with my Ice/Ice blaster, it's a build that is almost all single target focussed, and has a lot of control anyway.

I took:

Snow Storm

A very good slow, it's also an extremely endurance heavy toggle. It does minus fly which is very useful in certain AV fights, and of course I combine it with Shiver from the Ice secondary to pretty much bring things to a stand still.

Slotting: 2 End Reducers 2 Slows works well for me.

Flash Freeze

I took this for soloing primarily, this is a ranged AOE sleep, which obviously isn't a massive amount of use in a team where they'll get disturbed, however for a predominantly single target build it works well. The way I use it is to put them to sleep, then I will hold one guy, then kill him. Hold the next, kill him etc, so they don't ever have a chance to hit back. You could use it in a similar manner but rather than holding them bop them with Total Focus so they go from asleep to stunned, then finish them, which I imagine would work fairly well. It's got quite a long animation however so firing it in the first place can sometimes be painful. I occasionally use it when teaming if someone accidentally aggros a second group, however you better either get out the way or have someone else pick the aggro up before they wake up if you do that, or you've a good chance of getting flattened.

Slotting, 2 Accuracy, 3 Sleep Duration, 1 Recharge.

Hibernate

A useful panick button, also very handy for my ice/ice blaster as when running snow storm she can get a little low on endurance over a prolonged fight (again, normally only with AVs). Even without any slotting you can regain full endurance from being almost out in just a few seconds, the same with health, and unlike phase shift, the animation is extremely quick. A very handy power in my opinion.

I didn't take:

That Awful Armour

At the sort of level you normally fight at in the 40s (as in the relative level of the mobs to you) a bit of Defence I find about as much use as a chocolate fireguard and not worth the endurance it costs. Also, given the amount of control available on my Ice/Ice it's pretty much not needed, I work on a principle of not getting hit in the first place, and don't spend a massive amount of time in mele with her, definitely not until everything is either falling over, held or asleep, so I didn't feel I needed it. I think if you're running a build like energy/energy, particularly if you want to go in to mele, you'll fair better with an epic that gives you a hold and/or a resistance base shield.

It depends what blaster build you're putting them with as to which powers are worth taking from the cold mastery set.

Regarding sets that are laugable.

For example, a comparison of something like an archery/devices blaster against a fire/kin controller. Which was the stronger build prior to ED? Which got hit the hardest by ED? I think you'd be hard pushed to say that the answer to both those questions wasn't the same, and by a fairly considerable margin.

No, the game isn't just about number crunching, how you play a character has a lot to do with it, but in a stat based game, which underneath everything CoH really is, it does have to come in to it. ED hit hardest people who slotted their powers with 5 or 6 of the same enhancements, certain character types were more likely to do this. Not all the character types that did this were comparatively strong to start with, not all were weaker ones were either I'm well aware, but it didn't matter, it was arbitrary. If you 5 or 6 slotted most of your powers with the same enhancment type then you got hit quite hard, regardless of how strong the build was to start with. OK that's an over-simplification of the situation, but there's also a good element of truth in it as well.

Powernova, I've seen a sonic/energy blaster play, teamed with one for about 35 levels on one of my characters, and it certainly looked pretty decent. He seemed to be quite impressed with it although I always got the impression he didn't think it was as good as his ice blaster. I'd be interested to hear how it plays with a weaker secondary if anyone has one.

No, I can't say I ever had a problem with feeling useful in teams with any of my blasters, but in a time when tankers and scrappers were a lot tougher, from a blasters point of view I wanted to be doing a lot more in other areas because when even in non-herding team it was common place for a tanker to get 2-3 groups at once, which would generally be somewhere between +3 and +5, a blaster was more work to keep alive, both on the part of the player and any defender in the team. The only thing that a fire blaster does better than everything else is damage, it really is. Elec has some other nice quirks, it blaps well, the end drain used to be very good, but fire does damage and that's about it until you add an epic to that. If all you do is damage, then you damn well want to be doing a lot more of it than anyone else.

The nukes were a good balance out at that stage for sets like fire which has very very little in the way of damage mitigation, not in terms of overall game balance, but in terms of character balance in the context of the game at the time.

Think about how survivable a perma-eluding SR scrapper was? An issue 2/3 regen scrapper? Particularly a fully HOed up one of which there were many. At that stage blasters needed something else to put them on an even keel, and the outrageous damage of the nukes, or really any AOEs if you were firing at 30-40 mobs, was a great leveller at that time. Did it make for good team play? No, but then did having virtually unkillable scrappers make for good team play? Or tankers who could herd an entire map then kill them with burn and FSC? Or illusion/radiation controllers who could solo virtually any AV in the game with just a mediocre build? Probably not.

I tend to view most of the I4/5 (think I got my issues right off the top of my head) changes as quite separate from ED, basically because quite a lot of them in my opinion changed the game for the better. ED on the other hand was an abitrary and badly thought out "accross the board" solution, which actually ended up hitting some character types a lot lot harder than others, and it wasn't always the best ones that were hit the hardest. I'm absolutely certain that not all the implications for all the power sets were considered before it was implemented, and it left us with a few sets that really are quite laugable now, and others, which were good anyway, being comparatively unscathed other than the fact they've lost perma-hasten. Personally I have no problem with the game being made harder, frankly, I think it needed it, but I hate badly thought out changes.

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The best part of the ED changes was that we now have Energy/*, Elec/*, and Fire/* Blasters who level past 32 and still use their other attacks

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ED had relatively little impact on how frequently people nuke, other than that some people got rid of it. The aggro and AOE caps were what really changed the tanker/herd/nuke that used to be so devastating, and probably quite boring to play with at times. Also, as someone who had an elec and a fire blaster post level 32 before any of these changes, I don't understand how you could not use other powers. The nukes were just the icing on the cake back when blasters were a hell of a lot squishier than scrappers comparative to now, and frankly, needed then to compare in usefulness in team situations.

My take on the blaster primaries is that there are some sets that are very definitely a lot better than others. AR isn't one of my favourite primaries really, there just seems to be little it does that another set doesn't do better.

From my experience of the sets I've played Fire and Ice primaries feel the strongest, Ice is by far the easiest to play.

Fire balances out it's massive damage with a complete lack of control and high dependance on good team mates in larger teams to function at full capacity, and by being a comparatively weak soloing set. But when you play in a good team with a well built fire blaster, you really do know about it. There's no question of "I wonder how we're getting through these mobs that quickly?".

Ice blast is definitely most versatile and an already good set will only get better if/when ice storm and blizzard become buffable by aim and build up. Currently the set is comparatively weak in the AOE department which I personally think it needs to be to give it even a semblance of balance. Changing that too much will mean that anyone who puts thought in to making characters that work well will be hard pushed to pick a different primary. Ice has holds, single target damage, a cone, an AOE which is good slotted for slows, a nuke which can be useful for a variety of different things and which does pretty decent DoT. Add the sort of AOE damage that you'd be looking at by making the two AOEs buffable, and unless you're building for concept, why make anything else?

Energy is OK, the AOEs are hard to use well though, combining them is a non-starter in a lot of situations simply because after the first one, you aren't going to hit more than 1 or 2 with the second one anyway. Single target damage is alright, damage mitigation which is good for soloing. For teaming, well, less good. Knockback can be used well but is more often used badly in my experience. Teaming with a nova using energy blaster is a pain in the butt for other squishies - nothing like having several irate bosses land behind your shoulders now well out of any debuffs and looking for someone to take their wrath out on - but for the user itself it's got a fair bit going for it particularly for soloing and small teams.

Electricity Blast is in itself not the greatest of sets, the damage is fairly low, the animations are long, and its low on attacks. A pet for a blaster was never something I liked - I prefer to control my own aggro - and tesla cage, while very handy, really doesn't compare to freeze ray. On the other hand it does have a ranged nuke, it meshes exceptionally well with the electric epic, and with certain secondaries it's a good set for blapping. Used to be a great set with certain secondaries, but end drain was hit particularly hard by ED so now I'd say merely a good set in some circumstances, a moderate set if you're not using elec or energy secondary.

AR. Some reasonable AOEs, OK damage but resistable damage type which detracts a lot more from this as you go up in level, long rooting on a lot of the attacks. Overall I wasn't impressed with this primary. Again, AOEs with knockback are a pain in the butt, the single target damage isn't that fantastic, and blasters, in my opinion, are very much about front loaded damage which is why I dont rate highly the sets without aim/build up.

Archery just seems to be AR made worse, how did they do it? Why did they do it? I hear the "it's low endurance" or "the attacks recharge quicker" and this really doesn't change the fact it's a low damage high endurance cost set. Why high endurance? Because you have to attack twice as many times to get the job done and with the faster recharge on the attacks endurance usage over time is high, damage over time is feeble.

Sonic is the only blaster set I've never played. I teamed a lot with a sonic blaster and was moderately impressed with the set. The AOEs are OK, the resistance debuff is definitely handy at times, but having not played it I'm really not sure how good it is to play. I always sort of fancied trying one, but I hated the animations on the attacks.

Ahh, but then you'll have even more to lose, will you risk it?

I would love to do the cathedral of pain trial, but I don't want to risk the base being trashed. I wish there was a way to do the trial without fitting the IoP, but I don't believe there is.

Individuals don't have prestige, supergroups do

The character which has earned the most in our SG has made about 400k if I remember rightly.

I slot speed boost on my kinetic (level 43) with 3 end. modifications, I find it's worth it particularly for when I exemp to before stamina when some builds can chew through what it gives unslotted, aided by the recharge boost. At higher level I like it to be slotted for recovery so if someone's zeroed out their endurance (nukes/EMP), the minute their endurance starts recovering they can start playing at full capacity and still recharge.

Plus, I have the slots, so why not? It might be overkill in a lot of situations, but it's not taking anything away from the build either, and occasionally it's handy.

I just tried to connect on TS2 using the details in the initial post, and couldn't.

The knockback and extra damage appears to operate like a cone, not a PBAoE. If it's AOE not cone it's certainly a small enough radius that I've never had it effect anything behind me.

Edited, yeah, description says AOE, but it's exceptionally small radius, you really wont get anything that isn't pretty much immediately in front of you with it.

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e : Charged brawl (high damage)
q: havok punch (moderate damage)
mouse button 4: Lightning clap punch (extreme damage + group knockback)

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Sorry to be picky, but I think you've got some of your attacks muxed ip.

Charged Brawl is lower damage than Havok Punch.

Also lightning clap is definitely not extreme damage, in fact, it does no damage at all, it's knockdown and disorient. I think you may be mixing that up with Thunder Strike which is a very tight cone, extreme damage on target, and has a chance to knockback.

I like all defender teams but really in larger teams in CoH I prefer something that gives a bigger mix, essentially because I find the five main archetypes in CoH are designed to work well together, and do. I don't get that feeling in CoV at all, the only team I really play in now is an all corruptor team.

All corruptor teams are very good - the one I run is a mix of rad, dark, kinetic and thermal secondaries, and fire, ice, and rad primaries. I enjoy it - need to keep your head screwed on like in most all squishy teams, mistakes tend to be paid for - but the speed of play is great and I love fast paced play. I'm inclined to think all corruptor teams are slightly faster, simply because of the strength of fire and ice primaries. Although to be fair, rad certainly plays as a very strong defender secondary/corruptor primary.

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Surely its a much greater challenge to play a character who is non-human, weird background, superpowers, etc etc well than play someone of the opposite sex properly?

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Probably not, no. Basically because when you play an opposite gender character you've got to be convincing to people who really are that gender. When you play a character who is non-human, you're not playing to such a discerning audience - at least I don't think you are

I very very rarely see cross gender characters played convincingly, usually because they're too stereotypical, or because the gender of the character becomes such a heavy focus. Having said that a female friend of mine plays a very convincing male character, I very very much doubt anyone would ever think the character was played by a woman.

Personally I can't play male characters, I think it's that I can't get my imagination to really fire up unless I can put myself in the middle of things, whatever the reason, it doesn't work for me.

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Playing a damage dealer on the other hand you just have to click the next power in the chain, no decision needed.

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That's quite a strange sentiment. At level 50 on my Ice Blaster, I have:

3 single target ranged attacks, 2 single target mele attacks, 3 holds, a sleep, a nuke, a cone attack, a cone slow and a PBAoe Knockdown, plus the usual gubbins like aim, build up, pool powers etc.

My attack chain is fluid depending on the situation, it's how I stay alive and effective.