brophog02
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Quote:1) Aim and Build Up are really not optional choices for Blasters. You live and die by damage, and that pair is what allows your damage to really quickly enough to keep you amongst the living. Most commonly used together prior to using your AOE chain. Aim and Build Up are commonly skipped on Def/Corr but never on Blasters.Originally Posted by twelfth
Present questions:
1. Aim - I didn't take Aim on my corr because it just wasn't necessary as yet. I know Aim tends to be YMMV for corrs, but curious if people felt that +ToHit (and some +dmg) would be necessary on a set that automatically gives slight -Def on every primary power (and can be slotted for more -def). On my Ice/EM Blaster, Aim is usually what I use for dmg and acc buffing when BU is on recharge. With a rad/ blaster, which would you guys recommend?
2. Lightning Field - Skippable? I've been highly suspicious of PBAOE damage auras. With a Blaster, this seems to scream AggroMagnet. I solo a fair amount, so I'm not likely to have the aggro management around to assist. Plus, looks like an unnecessary end hog that doesn't even give back End.
3. Lightning Clap - Skippable or delay until later? I don't mind the crowd control, but at 20 it doesn't look like the hawtness & I'll probably be working toward Stamina in this lvl range.
2) LF is usually skipped. It does add damage, and if you build to manage the aggro it is pretty decent damage. The problem is that it draws a ton of aggro, and foes usually aren't near you long enough for the DPS to really play out in your favor. Not a terrible power, though most people find it more trouble than it is worth.
3) Again, usually skipped. Its mitigation, but because it is a PBAOE around you, it can potentially lead to scatter. Usually your goal is to clump and burn, especially with a set with the AOE potential of Rad. If I wanted the mitigation, I'd take it ahead of Thunderstrike, which I always recommend skipping on basis of the long animation. Lightning Clap is, thankfully, rather quick activating. -
A lot of thought in that post.
There are people who swear that squishies shouldn't be in melee. Lots of them in fact, including those that feel high and mighty about their personal opinion.
(Think about it for a second though: If squishies were never meant to be in melee, why would so many melee oriented powers be in their sets? Kind of a rhetorical question....)
As you and I both know, there is a big difference between being in melee and being in melee for a reason! Arctic Air is usually a very good reason. Of course, those that universally think that squishies should never be in melee see it as a melee power....something they weren't "meant" to take, and therefore don't. Blasters do the same thing with their secondaries, despite the fact there are many melee powers in their secondary sets.
There are those, though, that think there are ranged ATs and melee ATs and never shall the two meet. Those players often can't see past that gross generalization, and often therefore miss some great opportunities.
The other case is the one you highlighted: "Support" toons. Its not just Defenders who suffer from this ailment. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
There is a very strong argument for rooting in Plant but much less so in Earth or Ice, and IMO both of those sets still come out ahead of Plant in terms of reliable damage mitigation.
I partially agree with that, although it varies a lot in terms who you are fighting. Depending on circumstances, I'd put plant ahead of either of those (in terms of mitigational ability), simply because seeds is essentially a Mag 3 hold up every single spawn, and neither have anything that powerful and that consistent in their primary. Plant and Earth, for example, share many similar powers: ST immob, AOE immob, AOE sleep, ST hold, AOE hold, pet.
Where something like Earth has an advantage is that it stacks effects better than Plant does. Stuns are easy to stack with, whereas Creepers and Seeds lacks that.
Imo, plant needs that little extra control in the secondary to really lock down bosses on the way to 1-50. Storm has the control to help there, as does TA (which is one of my favorite control sets). -
Quote:Same here. Now if it is a fun person, all bets are off. You can use nothing but brawl and rest as far as I'm concerned if we're having a good time together. But I've developed a very short leash for folks that have 1 attack, call themselves a healer, and have a mommy complex.Originally Posted by Panzerwaffen
Personally, I won't invite anyone to a team that advertises themselves as a "healer". Too many bad experiences, so I just avoid the potential headaches now.
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People have a lot more inf now than they once did, both due to playing during the AE days, and because 50s earn more inf now than they once did.
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Quote:I don't think that is the cause. The game, as a whole, has simply gotten far more instanced than it originally was, and hunts in a game where street sweeping is more common makes a lot more sense.Originally Posted by Obsidius
They should just remove hunts altogether. It might be an extreme idea, but I always thought hunts were just a bad device that is used when the writer needs some sort of segueway between missions, implemented before better tech allowed for better story writing.
It also works in a comics sense, where it is very common for a character to be the "man on the street" getting information or doing a certain task.
They don't "work" now mostly because the players don't work that way. We've become very accustomed to going from mission to mission, usually in the same city, and not very far away. The entire game, both in design and in playstyle, has moved away from the traveling and street hunting that was more common when the game started. -
Quote:Really sucks on GMs that you can't immob, which is why I dislike using my stormies on such tasks. Most AVs you can immob, however, and it is rare that you find a team that can't immob an AV (even if it is just a blaster doing it).Originally Posted by New Dawn
I certainly have, the last thing you want is some Stormie causing Reichsman to run around like a headless chicken.
Of course, Tornado having a fear effect is rather irrelevant in any discussion of -kb versus non -kb in that immobs with no -kb may have contained the fear effect but it is still prone to scattering to the four corners. -
Quote:I disagree with most of this.Originally Posted by JWatt
For a Fire Blaster, I'd suggest any secondary other than Ice. It's not that I think Ice is worse, but it just doesn't work so well with a fast-paced Fire Blaster.
Fire/Electric gets more AoE with Thunder Strike, as well as good ST melee, a hold (albeit a melee hold), and Power Sink. It gives you a little more control direct control and plain damage.
Fire/Energy gives you high-powered Single Target Melee, but little in the way of AoE melee. You also get Build up at lv 4, Conserve Power at lv 16, Power Boost to pump up the Stun in your melee hits, and Range Boost, which a friend of mine uses to give Fire Breath and Blaze a little extra range and aid in pulling. This is a pretty popular combo.
Fire/Devices loses you Build up, but you get some more tactical powers in return: Caltrops to slow enemies while you pound them, using TP Foe to drop enemies on top of stacked trip mines, and throwing Smoke grenade that make enemies miss, as well as a floating gun turret. This used to be a popular one in PvP.
/Ice is a very nice secondary for Fire, because it gives you what fire sorely lacks.....mitigation......and it does that better than just about any other secondary. Fire/Ice is a very effective and fun combination.
/Elec....the AOE component to Thunderstrike is very small and the animation is so long that I always recommend skipping it. It just isn't needed with CB, HP, SG.
/Energy is similar to /Elec due to the melee attacks, but not quite as damaging of a secondary since more of the damage is tied up in the long animating Total Focus and the set lacks a damage aura. Conserve Power is not as good of a recovery tool as Power Sink, although it does come earlier, and Boost Range is a solid utility power for those that want to stick to range. It does, however, stack with itself well with all of the stuns in the set.
/Devices.......just don't. Seriously, if Ice could be said to be too slow of a secondary for Fire (which I disagree with), then devices would be like crawling in quicksand. Devices got absolutely neutered between ED, the old smoke grenade 'nerf', and Inventions. Targeting Drone, Smoke Grenade, and Cloaking Device are mostly replaced by Inventions and trip mine, time bomb, and Gun Drone are very slow casting powers. The set, frankly, needs totally redone to compete with other sets in today's game. There are those that play it, and it can be a fun set, but you have to play to its strengths and be accepting of its vast limitations. -
Quote:Two things:Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
So, Seeds is still great at what it does. But I would say Seeds and patches are close to equal in power. Especially in relation to the rest of the power set they appear in.
1) Contagious Confuse proc added to seeds also gets nearly all of the bosses.
2) A knockdown patch, while helping with bosses, does not mitigate nearly the amount of total damage coming in from the entire spawn that seeds does even without getting the bosses. While bosses are usually the big threats, we're really concerned about total damage, regardless of source, and if I can completely mitigate all but the bosses I'm better off than mostly mitigating all plus the bosses. That's true for solo, and even moreso for teams.
On a plant/storm, freezing rain is mostly used as a debuff because seeds is just that good. You're still better off with seeds+roots+freezing rain than you are using freezing rain for its knockdown effect, in no small part because roots is your primary killing weapon at least until 35. Even after 35, when Tornado becomes available, roots is your primary killing weapon in that it leverages Tornado.
In terms of power strength, freezing rain as a complete power is one of the most powerful all around choices in the game. As strictly a knockdown effect, however, it is well below what seeds can do. -
Quote:That's their fault for building a gimp toon that only has 1 attack and whose only reason to play is to cite how many missions no one died.Originally Posted by KingSnake
it's drives some support guys NUTS, so I do my cheast pounding solo now a days.
I already have a mommy, I don't need another one. If I jump headfirst into that pile, I deserved to die.
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Quote:Definitely not just you. Dying breaks up the monotony and provides ample opportunity for jokes.Originally Posted by KingSnake
Other then that, i try and geta feel for the team. If it's a layed back team, just having fun, i tend to play more recklessly, because reckless play IMO is fun. Maybe it's just me.
The game gets boring at times, especially in the post-30 steamroll teams. Walk in, fire off 2 powers (maybe), collect the loot and move on. No thinking required. No discussion needed. Most of the time 2 people could have handled the spawn in the time all 8 of you could, making most of the team irrelevant. Now, add a few semi-reckless people who are not afraid to joke about their own death........that's entertainment! Now I have situations where I might have to use my powers creatively. Now I'm not just hitting 1,2 every battle like a gerbil.
If the team is very, very structured and just steamrolling every mission, I'll likely finish it and find a new group. Nothing against those folks, I just find those types of ultra effective teams to be quite boring, and I don't play the game simply to collect 50s. -
Quote:Except for the fact that those rewards need teams and the event has been run so much that players have the badges and are burnt out and therefore aren't wanting to team as much for the events.Originally Posted by Energyman
As for them happening so frequently now, it's a good thing because it allows the players ample opportunity to experience this event and get the rewards from it.
The extended time combined with increased frequency hasn't had the effect of letting more players run the event, it has just begun to aggravate those that have run the event, and likely at least partially responsible for threads like this one on the forum this month.
A thread like this, even doubly so, as most of the zones in the game rarely see their banner event done after about the first week, especially at this frequency. The events come so often now that if you're not in an already populated zone then you're not moving to a less populated zone and then struggling to find enough people.......you're just waiting for your zone to hit. Meanwhile, those people who have business in those other zones are often interrupted by an event few, if any, people are actually running.
TFs are not the only thing interrupted, especially in the lower zones on blueside where there are lots of patrol missions in the arcs. -
All of the primaries work well for what you're wanting, with Archery and Psychic being particularly nice with 80ft tier 3's (most tier 3's are 40 or 50 ft), and are therefore the most common for those wanting a lot of range.
For an all ranged build, it is the secondaries that are more important to note as most have powers used in melee. An all ranged build, outside of respec builds, is a pretty rare thing as it sacrifices a lot to just use ranged attacks. Most blasters will, at least in part, move in and out of melee range except in teaming situations where far fewer powers for all ATs are needed.
The most common pure ranged build is Archery/Energy where one sacrifices all or most of the Energy melee attacks and focuses on things like Boost Range, Power Boost, and Conserve Power. MM, usually again paired with Archery/Psychic, is also a pretty common ranged build using Psychic Scream and occasionally moving in for Drain Psyche. Devices is far less common, particularly since most of its functionality is replaced with IOs, but if you adapt to its playstyle many have found it an enjoyable ride. Ice, although not common, can be very effective for its mitigational tools such as Ice Patch and Shiver.
The biggest question is how much you team. Honestly, if you team a ton any Blaster primary could be made to work purely from range and that's probably what you are accustomed to seeing is the Blasters hanging back, firing off a few attacks, and moving to the next spawn. Solo situations are where the melee oriented nature of the secondaries plays the biggest part. -
Quote:3 reasons Roots is used far more than some other immobs:Originally Posted by KingSnake
Plant prolly has the best IMMOB you can get, but it's overrated IMO.
1) The damage is very good.
2) Plant is already full of immobs with Creepers and Fly Trap. Plant, unlike ice, is an immob set built in large part around immobilizations.
3) Seeds is far better mitigation than any knockdown patch in terms of total spawn control. -
Quote:LS and Tornado are also highly benefited from -KB, tornado in particular being far more useful with an immob with -kb. Its ambiguously written, and certainly not written exact enough for me to assume that an immob without -kb is going to satisfy the requirements.Originally Posted by hilker
All the powers mentioned have an Afraid or Avoid effect, which causes non-immobilized enemies to flee.
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Quote:Actually, you get shafted on everything but enhancement slots early on.Originally Posted by Archon099
You know, it never really occurred to me until you mentioned it, but yeah! Why not? We get more of every other storage space imaginable except the one that can pose the most problems.
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Quote:Originally Posted by hilker
It's not the primary reason the original poster gave.That reads like -kb is a primary factor.Quote:Originally Posted by Donna_
I am looking for a primary with lots of immobilisation so mobs can't flee, Freezing Rain, Tornado, Lightning storm etc etc...
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Quote:I wasn't telling you, I was backing you up!Originally Posted by Gypsy_of_Paradox
I already have two stormers at 50, a Plant/Storm and Necro/Storm. Trust me I know all this already. Was telling the OP that Plant/Storm is a blast and I listed my attack chain.
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Quote:It doesn't have -kb, which is the primary reason for seeking the immobs.Originally Posted by hilker
Take a closer look at Storm/Dark, then.
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Quote:It's amazing.Originally Posted by Gypsy_of_Paradox
Plant/Storm all the way.
Creepers>Seeds>Rain>Tornado>Lightning Storm>Fireball>
This combo is downright insane, insane on the blue bar too TBH. But serious fun.
But you'll want Hurricane with it. Plant doesn't deal with single targets well, and stacking vines + strangler takes a lot of animation time. Hurricane is your primary mitigation tool for those encounters, at least until you can get more recharge and/or epic holds.
The combo is highly, highly dependent on AOE damage, and therefore the more you can stack mobs closely together, the faster you can kill. It's an odd combination in that it takes far longer to kill enemy than it does a large group packed together. Hurricane + roots comes in extremely handy for herding and bunching those mobs together so that tools like LS and Tornado can be more effective. Storm is known for chaos, but the truth is that the entire set is comprised of AOE powers and effects and therefore increases in efficiency the more packed everything becomes. -
Quote:..Originally Posted by Ironblade
- It would have to be so limited that there would be no point. -
Quote:I don't know where you're playing, but I'd hardly call them anemic at the moment. I'm not sure I've ever seen a time when more tankers were playing the game.Originally Posted by Blunt_Trauma
Buff Tanks somehow or the anemic popularity of them will decline even further. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Blue_Mourning
I think a lot of people knock the "traditional" tank-support-dps team builds and look down on it in some way on these forums. Yet, I've been on teams where that was the natural way to work things and it was a hell of a lot of fun.
Their mere existence is not what gets cited on this forum. The idea that they must exist, always, is what gets cited on this forum.
It is when one must put every combination somehow into 3 types, and build teams with only the idea of those three types that it gets cited on this forum. Its too general for a game built with the specific in mind, and far too limiting to extract the uniqueness out of this game. As far as many are concerned this game, and any game of its type is nothing more than a 3 class system.
That's why the entire genre is in a complete and total funk. It isn't that developers don't want to break out, it is that players keep trying to put things back into what they consider the proper place. -
Quote:You don't read the boards much............Originally Posted by Medic_brietz
You would think if someone went to the effort of posting about something being absolutely horrible, then maybe someones ears would perk up and think of a way to fix it.
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Quote:Inf Transfer gone wrong.Originally Posted by FourSpeed
Alas, I have no answer for #1 except to suggest mercilessly exploiting the
casual gamer for untold amounts of time and inf.