StrykerX

Your Mids data seems to be corrupted. Neither the datalink or the data chunk work... are you using the latest Mids version?

Ice Storm is a lot like Rain of Fire... it does good damage over a fairly large area but it takes a while to do it. Whether it's good or not really depends on your play style. Solo it's great since Ice has little other AoE and your Frost Breath will help slow enemies and keep them in the storm. On teams you'll find things often get killed a few seconds after you drop the storm, but against tougher mobs that last a while it is still handy. It's particularly good for Ice/Ice Blasters since Shiver + Ice Storm will bring an entire spawn to the slow cap. The main drawback is the 15 second duration... having enough mobs remain both alive and in the storm's area for that long pretty much requires additional slows (like Shiver or Snow Storm) or an AoE immobilize (plus not being on a team with heavy AoE damage).

If you solo a lot I'd definitely take it. If you mainly group it's more skippable though it is still your best AoE source.

If you don't plan to exemp much purples aren't too great on a Blaster. They give lots of recharge, but no defense... and defense is often the thing blasters build for.

Extremely high recharge builds are mainly good for characters who have a long recharge power they need to make permanent. Domination or Phantom Army, for instance, are far more effective permanent than with even one second of downtime. With Blasters there aren't really any such powers though... all recharge does is let you nuke more often or use more AoEs. That's handy, but in practice you only need so much recharge to do it. My Blaster recharge goals are generally:

1) Have a non-stop single target attack chain. I go for this on every Blaster.

2) Be able to use a crashless nuke every spawn (for Archery or AR, DP's nuke is more of an every other spawn thing). That can get a bit expensive but it's handy.

3) Be able to use Aim or Build Up every spawn. Takes about the same recharge as the crashless nuke, but applies to all Blasters with Aim and Build Up.

Once I have those, there's no real need for more recharge. I'm not going to be using Rain of Arrows twice a spawn or getting Aim and Build Up every spawn with any sane level of recharge, so once I have a solid attack chain and I can use all my AoEs each fight what is more recharge really giving me?

About the only purples I'd consider on a Blaster (assuming I ever get so attatched to one I use purples on him) are the Sleep or Confuse sets (for the bonuses) or the PBAoE or Targeted AoE sets. Thunderstrikes and Lockdowns are far too useful for defense to replace with purples... if I need more recharge that's what LotGs are for.

For really huge groups, I'd go with a Bots/Traps MM. No matter how tough your Scrapper or Brute is, he can only hold aggro on 16 targets or so. But with pets each pet can aggro 16, so you can potentially have dozens of enemies rounded up eating laser and missile barrages.

I really like the new Avengers show. It's not quite up there with Justice League but it's pretty good.

Yes, PFF is the last place you'd want a Kismet 6% to-hit IO.

Regarding Munitions, I have it on one Blaster for theme reasons (he's a Natural hero with gadgets so I wanted a no-FX shield and a hold that used a gun) and it's not bad. However, Body Armor is a bit less than half as effective as the toggle armors and has no component other than S/L... it costs no endurance and can't be suppressed but it's only a minor boost. If you don't specifically want other powers in the set or want to avoid any visual effects on your shield I'd go with another set.

(Though I do have to mention that having an AoE snipe can be fun at times, and who doesn't like shooting rocket launcers at people? )

Putting it in Health gives you on average around 1.2 HP / second... on a Scrapper that works out to be equal to around a 23% regen bonus. Considering I've rarely noticed Health (arond 75-80% slotted) in combat I wouldn't consider it worth a slot for that. Even if you are softcapped with no heal it's only going to shave a few seconds off your time to heal from almost dead to full. I don't see that having much effect really... a Regenerative Tissue unique would be twice as effective and cost a tiny fraction as much.

Go Flame Mastery and slot Rise of the Phoenix fully as a nuke. Don't look at faceplanting as something to fear, look at it as a chance to blow stuff up!

Brutes get Scrapper values for defensive powers, but they have Tanker level resist caps. That doesn't matter much when solo (unless you are /Fire and fighting fire users or you hit something like Unstoppable) but if you have resist buffs available a resist based Brute can get tougher than a resist based Scrapper. The more important thing is the Brute's higher hit points... they can take more damage than Scrappers and heal faster.

And of course Brutes and Scrappers have different power sets. In general Brutes do a bit less damage and are a bit harder to kill, but there are exceptions. I doubt many Scrappers can match a high recharge SS/Shield Brute for AoE damage, for instance... though Spines/Fire might come close. On the other hand, many Scrappers can cut down a boss faster than a Brute.

I personally prefer Blasters to either (to heck with staying alive, give me more damage!) but when I do play melee I tend to like both Scrappers and Brutes about equally. Some specific sets are better on one than the other, like Kinetic Melee which is significantly better on Scrappers due to the fact that they get more out of Power Siphon and can recharge it quicker. Dark Armor, on the other hand, is fabulous on Brutes because their larger HP total makes better use of the huge heal. And of course the big consideration: Scrappers can't have axes, clubs, or big stone hammers, and Brutes can't have single swords or spines.

(Before I19's fury adjustments I'd have said Brute > Scrapper for anything both can take, but Scrappers can actually outdamage Brutes now so it's harder to decide.)

I haven't used the Panacea proc but looking at it you get a 20% chance for a tiny heal and a minor endurance boost. The heal is laughably small... about half an unslotted Rad Controller's AoE heal (something like 6% of a squishy's health), so I wouldn't consider it very noticeable unless slotted in an AoE. The 7.5% endurance gain is also pretty minor in most cases... weaker than a Performance Shifter proc and generally going off less often since heals are not normally used every 10 seconds. I can really only think of two cases where the Panacea proc would really be noticeable:

1) In fast recharging attacks that also heal, like Siphon Life. You're already using it as part of your attack chain so a chance for a bit more health and some endurance is handy. Not game changing, but nice when it procs.

2) In Dark Regeneration. Here it is game changing... Dark Regeneration is an AoE with a pretty large radius so if you hit the full 10 targets on average you'll get 2 procs. The extra healing is still pretty minor (and completely worthless most of the time in Dark Regeneration since that usually heals you to full), but Dark Regeneration costs a ton of endurance... if Panacea procs twice you get a good chunk of that endurance back and if it procs three times and you have a lot of end reduction slotted (which you will) you can actually gain endurance.

So basically if you have a power that can take Panacea and you use it as part of your attack chain anyway it's a nice little bonus, and if you are Dark Armor it's a massive boost to your survivability since it lets you use Dark Regeneration pretty much all you want without endurance issues as long as you have plenty of enemies around.

(It might be useful to Warshades too, since Stygian Circle can slot it... but Warshades don't have near the endurance issues that Dark Armor does.)

Actually, I wonder if it might be possible for it to work as intended if they added a slight delay before the KB protection is applied? (Change it to "Mag XXX KB protection after 0.1 seconds") Do effects that are delayed like that still check on activation?

EDIT: What would definitely work would be having a pseudopet summoned after a short delay that granted the "KB protection if not held" effect... I know pseudopet based effects count as separate from the power that spawns the pet and don't check anything until the pet applies them. But that would be a lot of trouble for a rather minor effect of one power...

Be sure to take Telekinetic Blast and maybe Telekinetic Thrust... half their damage is smashing which is usually pretty effective against psi-resistant enemies. Plus the knockback can be decent mitigation.

My favorite is probably Demon Summoning. If you are counting all the villain power sets as non-original (since technically they didn't appear until CoV) then Robotics is also way up there... the bots are my favorite pets but demons are a close second and the whip attacks look great so that puts it slightly ahead of the bots.

Dual Blades, Dual Pistols, and Kinetic Melee are all very cool looking, I just prefer hordes of fire and ice flinging demons or laser and missile blasting bots.

Five Doctored Wounds is always nice for Aid Self... it's reasonably cheap, has global +recharge and great enhancement values, and you have a slot open for an interrupt IO if you are planning to use Aid Self mid-combat without ducking behind something. (Unless you already have five 5% recharge bonuses, in which case you might frankenslot it to get multiple recovery or regen bonuses.)

Masterminds are excellent soloists. Bots, Demons, and Thugs are generally the toughest but any of them solo quite well... which set and secondary you pick mainly determines whether you mow down large groups of weak enemies or small groups of strong ones. (Or large groups of strong ones, in a couple of cases like Bots/Traps )

Scrappers and Brutes are also good. Again, any combination works pretty well with the main differences being whether you are more AoE or single target focused and which enemy groups give you trouble. SS/Shield Brutes are among the best at mowing down hordes if you are rich (you want tons of recharge plus softcapped defense) but there are plenty of other good combinations.

VEATs and Warshades both supposedly solo very well... I haven't played either to any decent level yet but I've heard good things about them. Most of the squishier ATs (the ones with no mez protection) can be a bit tricky to solo large groups on, though it's possible with the right build. It'll be harder to do than on a melee AT or a MM though (with a couple of exceptions that usually involve a very expensive build).

Finally, if you aren't in a hurry and you really, really want to feel tough... try a Tanker. You won't defeat spawns as fast, but you'll be insanely hard to kill. Unless you go Fire/Fire... then you do take down mobs fast but you're only pretty tough instead of nearly immortal.