TwoHeadedBoy

I'm not sure if I agree with that.

That's fair enough, I prefer to keep it perma on my builds but as you already know Archery needs it more than fire does for ST and I like the added mob survivability all the time.

Misunderstanding- I thought you said earlier in this thread that it was a perma DP build.

Don't see global recharge or any indication of perma Drain psyche or damage resistance. I agree with your point, see this build. I just don't think this build you're mentioning has those defense totals stacked with perma drain psyche and a resistance shield. It just doesn't seem possible to make a viable build meeting all those requirements- The most reasonable thing I could do with perma DP and a resist toggle was 32.5% defense to all positions (which is actually better coverage overall anyways with just a small purple.) Building those numbers to 45% would require sacrificing recharge that would cost me perma DP.

You can't derp your way through playing a Kheldian, it's not Willpower. For a lot of people, having an understanding of what you're doing and keeping it in mind while you play isn't attractive compared to the alternative.

One of the things I stress for my personal characters is self sustainability- Relying on break frees to me is not a valid means of status protection since I solo a lot (I'd go through the whole tray before I finish a mission) and I play on the front lines (same problem, though I might get more use out of them.) My human Warshade has every Destiny tree at t4 so that he can take advantage of Barrier/Rebirth/Ageless on leagues when he's not as likely to get hit with mez or others have Clarion. I haven't collected Incarnates as extensively with my Blaster but I'm not ruling out a similar approach. For now though, Clarion is the best path for guaranteed self sufficiency at all times.
How do you figure?

RoA doesn't strictly *need* to be up for every spawn- E Fences>Explosive Arrow>Psychic Shockwave is perfectly viable AOE during the downtime, which is 20 seconds max on my build. Rain of Fire has the same base recharge as RoA and Fire can't benefit from a Force Feedback proc in its tAOE. I'm not sure how this equates to a shortcoming at all. Beating the rest of the team to the alpha strike OR casting on the next spawn from the previous one are both equally viable tactics to employ.
First off, I have to point out that "soloing doors" on BAF is the definition of poor team play- Dropping circles on the middle door of the south choke point occasionally is one thing, but to position yourself at a door exclusively without utilizing the choke point technique does more harm to overall team/league efficiency than anything else. Second, cones in my experience very rarely hit their target cap, especially a short range one like Fire Breath. Next, using RoA on that south door is very very easy. You can actually que it up before the door even opens, and all enemies will be hit by the arrows before they even exit. This works with RoF also.

Also for your example, don't discount the fact that escaped prisoners is one of the few situations in the game where knockback is a valuable tool, adding to the usefulness of Explosive Arrow. Running mobs knocked on their backs are very unlikely to escape.
Fire's AoE is good, I'm not saying it's bad- But it can't compete with Archery. yes, Fire's ST is better, but Archery/Mental can already solo the hardest single targets in the game without any outside buffs/pets/help/insps/temps/etc. To me, once you can do that, you don't really NEED any more ST.

Also, thought the set's DPS might not be top tier, Archery has a very good burst ST attack in Blazing Arrow. Aim>Concentration with Assult, Reactive and proper slotting/proccing means that Blazing Arrow can hit for over 950 pts of damage.

Looks like a big part of that is resting on Fire Breath vs. Fistful of Arrows. I never use cones on my Blaster builds- For this purpose they'd both be reasonably replaced with Psychic Shockwave which would obviously be the same on both. That leaves RoA vs. RoF and Fireball vs. Explosive Arrow. Something that'd be hard to quantify there is the fact that Explosive Arrow takes a FF +recharge proc to bring RoA up more often but even without that, you'll see a wider gap in AOE performance favoring Archery.

Didn't think you were, just explaining my train of thought.
I'm not saying the crashing nukes can't be used effectively, just that it's not efficient overall. All of my characters have a high standard for defense and resistance so that I can solo stupid things that aren't supposed to be soloed with them- That means lots of toggles. If I were to use a crashing nuke on a Blaster, it would mean that I would have no choice but to kill everything in one shot if I wanted to survive. On 54x8 with bosses, it's just not gonna happen, and I don't need it to anyways. Even if crashing nukes do more burst damage than RoA, they don't do more damage than 6 casts of RoA, or even close to as much damage over the course of a mission. Why would I sacrifice my toggles and my endurance for less damage with a nuke overall? Rain of Arrows has a 60s base recharge VS. 360s on the crashing nukes. Yes, I'm pretty sure they all have higher DPA than RoA does, but RoA can be used 6 different times per every single use of the crashing nukes without any penalty. It's a no-brainer for me.

I agree that Fire Blast is a good set, but combined with my philosophy for playing Archery/Mental (more like a Bow Melee/Psionic Armor Brute- Pretend you have a Fury bar) the cast time penalties of RoA are made up fairly easily. If the rest of your team can wipe an entire spawn in less than four seconds, you're better off doing like you said and playing leapfrog, or helping out with the alpha strike and then starting in on the next group as the rest of the team wipes the last bosses from the previous one.

First, Fire's nuke has around 4 times the base recharge if I'm remembering correctly. Second, it already wrecks your endurance and your recovery every time you use it, and Burnout has a massive endurance penalty. Even Drain Psyche and Ageless can't completely cover your losses since you'll have to retoggle everything every time you want to use your nuke... It's just not efficient at all.

Edit: Inferno actually has six times the base recharge of RoA.. Ouch.

Huh? I have those powers too. Tough doesn't have to be used. There are two 3% defense IO's, it's a one slot wonder and Weave is worth it. I don't see why you wouldn't take Weave, it's tied for Maneuvers as the best +defense power available to you. What are you saving power choices for that you think you need to choose between Fighting and Leadership? You don't need single target attacks on a farming build.

I have a feeling the OP was bluffing and doesn't even have the prize fund, and is now either stalling in an attempt to collect it or won't be fronting it at all since they clearly stated that they did not expect their goals to be attainable anyways. For this reason I don't expect to be declared the winner since I met the "bonus" criteria also- It would be much cheaper for the OP to select a winner that qualifies for less of the prizes offered (assuming they shell out anything at all.)

I'll take my 6 slotted Orbiting Death over your flying sushi any day of the week.

Ever since issue 21 the question for me hasn't been whether Peacebringers could do difficult things, but how well. Warshades set the bar so high and Peacebringers just don't have the tools to compete offensively, and depending on how you look at it, defensively through controls.
If you played a human form Warshade you would never need to rely on food for efficiency, it would just be a nice luxury to speed things up. My Warshade has 32.5% defense to all positions. If there aren't enough enemies to saturate Eclipse, I don't need Eclipse. Killing isn't slow without a Mire either. If there aren't enough enemies left to saturate one, your fluffies would kill them all by the time you finished casting the power anyways. The only reason why down-time buff wise could possibly be equated to deficiency on a Warshade is how unfairly good a Warshade becomes *with* its self buffs fully saturated.

While a Peacebringer is plenty stable defensively, it never excels offensively. That's not to say that a Peacebringer is bad offensively, but it's just designed to be mediocre. There isn't a whole lot of difference between a Peacebringer all the time and a Warshade when it doesn't have fuel. The reason for this is that if there isn't enough fuel, there's no need for the Warshade's self buffs in the first place. The only exception to this rule would be AV fights, but Warshades will even outdamage Peacebringers in that situation with 2-3 pets up.

I get pretty passionate during my anti Peacebringer rants because at heart, my Peacebringer is one of my favorite characters. I get frustrated and carried away sometimes when I complain about their deficiencies because I want them to be corrected so badly. I want it to at least be a possibility that my Peacebringer be as effective as my Warshade, but there are still some fundamental design flaws in the AT that need to be corrected before that can happen.

By the way I'm glad that your first ever post on the forum was dedicated to taking the time to passionately disagree with me about something. I'm nothing if not inspiring!

Everyone knows that VEAT's are numerically awesome. I would be dumb to dispute that. I lol at them for the same reason I lol at sets like Willpower, because even though they're very solid I find them dull and I can't see the appeal in playing something that does all the work for you. I like reactive, hands on play more than anything else. Toggle and forget just doesn't do it for me.
I recommend what I enjoy. I personally don't like ranged play at all which is why I can't personally suggest /Energy. I also don't like Beam Rifle from a non-aesthetic purpose, so I don't recommend that either. I do enjoy Mental Manipulation. I think it's a very fun and rewarding, hands on powerset that benefits from careful build planning and attentive play. I tend to spend more time talking about things that I'm personally enthusiastic about than things I don't really care for. Just because I don't like something doesn't mean I expect everyone else to not like it either, it just means I don't like it.

The thing about the SD thing is that every other secondary wasn't underperforming, so it's not really a fair comparison. I would love for other Blaster secondaries to be buffed, but even then, certain sets will already be better than others. It's like Illusion on a Controller, Super Strength on a Brute, Fire Blast on a Corruptor, Sonic on a Defender, etc. Mental is hardly the only example of one set performing above the rest. Dominators have access to Drain Psyche also, and it's a stronger version, but /Psi isn't the be all, end all of Dominator secondaries. The reason for this is that they have other good secondaries. Mental only stands out so much on a Blaster because of how deficient the other Blaster secondaries are, and Dark really isn't even that bad. Actually for ranged Blasting I would say that /energy is very viable also- A Beam Rifle/Energy Blaster could almost certainly accomplish all the same single target feats that an Anything/Mental could.