StrykerX

I would really like to see a "no FX" option for Energy Manipulation. Right now there is no martial arts / "natural" melee secondary for Blasters, just Devices which has no real melee attacks. Especially now that we have Dual Pistols, since most true "gun fu" concepts tend to rely on both guns and hand to hand combat... A martial arts based secondary would be great but would take a lot of time to create, so in the interest of feasibility it would make more sense to use an existing set. Energy's punches already look decent for a "natural" character, we just need a way to turn off the glow.

As I understand it the Reactive proc does not apply a normal DoT at all, but instead grants the target a power that debuffs their resists and/or has a chance to damage them (depending on which Reactive you have slotted). There are stack limits on how many copies of this power a target may have... I've heard four for the -resist portion and possibly five for the DoT (presumably the self-debuff and self-damage are two separate powers).

So if you have a Reactive Partial Radial Conversion, for example (50% DoT chance, 25% debuff chance) then what I believe happens when you hit someone is:

- There is a 25% chance to apply one stack of 2.5% resist debuff, provided the target does not already have four on them. This debuff is in the form of a granted self-debuff power rather than a normal debuff, so it does not scale based on AT modifiers, though it might scale based on level.

- One stack of a self-damage power is granted as long as the target does not already have five (or maybe just four) copies on it. This power has a 50% chance each tick of doing 13.39 fire damage which definitely is adjusted for level difference (but not AT since it's a granted self damage power) and it lasts five ticks. Every hit always applies a stack of this power, unlike normal DoTs... so every time you damage something (including every tick of a rain or damage aura) you always add another copy of the DoT (unless you're at the cap) which then has a 50% chance per tick of actually doing damage. The Reactive DoTs also do not cancel on miss like Fire DoTs so you can miss the first four chances and then see the last tick go off.

Note that this mechanic does limit the usefulness of the low-percentage DoT procs. Since you can only have at most five copies stacked on a target and every hit applies one, if you have one of the 25% chance for DoT Reactives slotted and you use a rain or lots of fast attacks you'll quickly cap out at five stacks of DoT that each have a 25% chance to fire per tick... you do not have a 25% chance per attack to apply a normal DoT (which would make reactive + rains absolutely broken instead of just nice). The big advantage of rain powers is that they get you to that cap fast and keep refreshing copies of the DoT that expire, but you still need a high chance for the damage to go off to make the most of them (which is why I'm going for the 75% DoT / 25% debuff Very Rare).

Also, DoTs only make one hit check (as opposed to rains, which make a new hit roll every tick). If they hit then they do multiple ticks of damage which can either be guaranteed (like Empty Clips) or have some percentage chance of occurring (like the extra damage DoTs in Fire attacks), depending on the power. Procs can only go off on an actual hit... whether that hit applies damage once immediately or multiple times over a period of time doesn't matter, either way the proc checks when the hit first lands.

Oh, and since you're DP you should know that Hail of Bullets is a DoT, not a rain. Each tick has a 60% chance to fire but it only affects the enemies that were first hit when you fire it off (even if they move away it still keeps ticking on them, it can't hit enemies that wander into the area mid-attack and it can't trigger multiple procs (even Reactive). Also, Bullet Rain is a DoT rather than an actual rain, despite the name.

I skipped Blazing Aura because things that close to me are going to get smacked down by Burn and Fire Sword Circle anyway. It's the stuff that's in the 10-15 foot range that Hot Feet really helps with, since half my AoEs don't go out that far. The second aura would add damage on AVs but I don't really want to burn endurance that fast on AVs since there likely won't be extra mobs to refuel on with Consume.

I haven't had any problems, but then I never did with the old sonic stuff either. I did notice some of the Destiny buffs looked suspiciously like the old sonic bubbles though, and I sort of wondered if some people would have trouble with them since I remember the uproar over the old sonic graphics. At least they don't have the old sonic sounds too...

Hopefully they'll be changed to a less eye-straining graphic.

The way IOs work is:

Set bonuses work as long as you don't exemp below the minimum level you could slot the IO that provides them, so as long as you are no more than three levels below the IO it counts toward your set bonuses. For instance, suppose you slot a ranged attack with three Thunderstrike IOs: a level 30 Accuracy/Damage, a level 30 Damage/Endurance, and a level 35 Accuracy/Damage/Recharge. As long as you are at level 32 or higher you get the recovery bonus for having 2 pieces slotted and the defense bonus for three pieces. If you exemp to anywhere between 27 and 21, you still get the recovery bonus from the two level 30 pieces but you lose the defense bonus because the level 35 piece no longer counts. If you exemp to 26 or lower you lose all the set bonuses because all of the IOs are too high level.

The actual enhancement values, on the other hand, still apply regardless of level. They are reduced when you exemp down far enough, just like other enhancements, but they don't stop working. So even if you slot level 50 IOs they still do work exemped down to low levels, they just provide a lot less enhancement than normal... but then, so do SOs.

There are also individual IOs that provide bonuses, like the KB protection IOs or the Kismet 6% to hit IO. Some of those only work when the power they are in is on (or for two minutes after using it if they're in a click power)... those IOs provide their bonus regardless of level as long as you can use the power they are in. For instance, a level 50 stealth IO in Sprint works even exemped down to level one because you still have Sprint. Others act like set bonuses... they work whether the power they are in is on or not, and even keep working if you exemp down too low to have access to that power, but they stop working if you go more than 3 levels below the IO. For example, if you take Tough at level 35 and put a level 20 Steadfast Protection 3% defense IO in it, you get the 3% defense even if you exemp down to level 17 and lose access to Tough. But if you go to 16 or lower you lose the bonus.

Finally, IOs tend to scale up slowly with level starting at 25. A level 25 single aspect IO is about the same as a -1 level SO, while a level 30 is about like a +1 SO and a level 50 is better than a +3. Dual aspect IOs give more total enhancement than singles, and triples are even better (quads are best)... you can get 10+ slots' worth of enhancement out of six slots by using a lot of high level triples. However, IOs below level 25 tend to drop off in power quickly... much quicker than they increase above 25. A level 20 IO is only 80% as strong as a level 25 and a level 15 is not much better than DOs. You don't want to slot a level 24 or lower IO unless you are actually using IOs while still in the teen levels (in which case you'll replace them once you can slot 25+ versions) or it's an IO that doesn't scale with level (like a proc, stealth or -KB IO).

As far as the build itself goes, the first thing you should do is decide on what you want out of it. Do you want lots of ranged defense? High recharge? Better endurance recovery? Then find sets that give bonuses that help you reach those goals. One set I really like on Blasters is Thunderstrike... it gives good ranged defense and some extra accuracy (and it has excellent enhancement values) so I tend to 6-slot all my single target ranged attacks with it. It's not even all that expensive.

Finally, if you just want improved performance at a minimum price you can frankenslot. The idea is to mostly ignore set bonuses (though you can still pick up useful 2- and 3-slot bonuses like recovery or +HP) and cram as much enhancement value as possible into your powers. The advantage is that most types of powers have at least a couple of sets with lousy bonuses that hardly anyone wants... you can pick those recipes up for almost nothing on the market and by using several dual and triple aspect "junk" IOs you can get a ton of enhancement in a power. You may not have the good set bonuses like defense or recharge, but having all your attacks slotted with the equivalent of three damgage SOs, two accuracy, two recharge, and two endurance makes a big difference. (Unfortunately, a few power types like defense, targeted AoE or PBAoE are a bit harder to frankenslot cheaply, but most powers can be). You can actually make a full level 50 frankenslotted build for a few million inf... just make sure you use IOs that don't need rare salvage and avoid level 40+ IOs because they cost a lot more to craft than the ones in the 30s.

On AVs I tend to use Build Up, run through my single target chain a couple of times, then hit Aim and run through the chain a few times until Build Up is recharged (I don't run extreme recharge so it takes more than two). Build Up and Aim only take about 1.3 seconds each so effectively you can replace your lowest damage attack (probably your tier 1) with it.

On my Fire Blaster (my only high-ish recharge Blaster) I do around 200 points with Fire Blast (counting enhancements and Defiance) and if I have a Speed Boost or other recharge buff (fairly common in trials) I can chain Fire Blast -> Fire Sword -> Blaze nonstop. Aim boosts Blaze's damage by 119 points and Fire Sword's by 86, so Aim -> Blaze -> Fire Sword does a few points more damage than Fire Blast -> Blaze -> Fire Sword and the Aim bonus will last through an entire second cycle and probably a third Blaze... that's a lot more damage than the one Fire Blast I skipped (which takes longer to animate than Aim so no other DPS loss). Obviously, Build Up does even better. You just want to make sure you use them one at a time so you get the full 10 seconds of boost from each... a two minute fight isn't going to be shortened noticeably by stacking them and you lose an attack's worth of damage.

Good things about Dual Pistols:

- Awesome animations (if you like over the top gun fu)

- Variable secondary effects can be nice on Defenders and Corruptors

- Really cool, hard hitting crashless nuke


Bad things about Dual Pistols:

- Horrible animations (if you hate over the top gun fu and want realistic shooting)

- long animations make it harder to hit and run

- a few percent below average in DPS (about 5% below Energy Blast, which is probably the most "average" set)

- Secondary effects are so weak on Blasters that only fire or standard ammo (for the knockdown) are really useful

- Crashless nuke is dangerous (long animating PBAoE) and recharges half as fast as other crashless nukes


Overall I consider the set about average for Defenders and Corruptors and somewhat below average for Blasters unless you have high recharge, in which case you can use Hail of Bullets often enough to turn it into a good AoE set (though even with perma-Hasten it's basically an every other spawn power unless you're taking 30+ seconds a spawn). That doesn't mean it's not worth playing if you like the animations, it just means you'll notice other Blasters outperforming you. But they won't look as cool doing it...

I'd suggest something like this:

Looking at the detailed info for [Particle Burst] in game, it looks like a normal attack except for one thing: it is marked as effect area "single target" but type "AoE, Energy". So maybe it triggers an AoE off of whatever it hits and is coded somewhat like a chain power or the annoying Hamidon lightning attack?

Well, I generally consider powers that can be used every spawn or two as better than full nukes. The nukes are great fun but in practice I rarely use them in normal play unless I have a way to quickly get endurance back (either a couple of blue pills I don't mind using, or a blue pill and an endurance recovery power). So "best AoE" to me is generally whatever allows me the biggest alpha strike (since AoEs are not as useful once the minions are mostly dead), provided I get to use it on most spawns.

As for damage, Rain of Arrows on a level 50 Defender does 3 ticks of 48.77 damage each (unenhanced), for a total of 146.31 to most targets. By comparison, Ice Storm only does 116.78 over a far longer time period with the same recharge. Blizzard does do 500 damage, but with six times the recharge and an endurance crash... Rain of Arrows is available every fight on high recharge builds and every other fight (or every fight, depending on how fast you are going) on most normal builds and you never have to skip using it because you don't want your toggles to drop or because you're out of blue pills.

Granted the normal AoEs do more damage over time due to having much faster recharges, but most fights don't need AoE spam constantly. RoA + Fistful + Explosive fully enhanced means opening each fight with around 470 damage, which is enough to clear or badly damage minions (especially solo where you get a damage bonus). That's almost as much damage (not counting Scourge) as Rain of Fire + Fireball + Fire Breath on a Fire Corruptor... not too bad for a Defender. By comparison, Ice only does about 376 damage with Frost Breath + Ice Storm so on the (at least 5 out of 6) spawns where Blizzard is down Archery deals quite a bit more damage.

That said, the mobs hit by Ice Storm and Frost Breath are slowed almost to uselessness and will be more concerned with running around trying to get out of the storm than shooting you, but from a damage standpoint Archery is better. Ice is probably more useful overall to a team since debuffs > damage for Defenders and Archery has no secondary effects, but that's not what the OP was asking about. If you want to approach the every-spawn damage output of a Fire Corruptor Archery is one of the best ways to do so. If you just want good solid damage, more debuffs, and the ability to occasionally drop the most powerful AoE a Defender can use, go Ice.