This is more of an outline and explanation of one possible way of building and playing a blaster, rather than a comprehensive guide about all the different ways you could put together the three powersets listed in the thread title.
The build described below offers a wide variety of tools for solo and team play. When soloing, you can move through PvE content at high speed, while at little risk of defeat. On teams, you can deal a lot of damage, serve as a pocket controller, and also serve as a potent debuffer who substantially reduces incoming damage and mezzes. You can even use ice patch and/or bonfire to help out the tank, to function as a pseudo-tank when no tank is on your team, or to help protect a team's squishies in the back ranks from melee attacks. You can be a single target blaster who stays at range to keep aggro under control, an AOE destroyer of minions and lieutenants, and a blapper who literally gets in the face of the purple boss that nobody else has engaged (and you'll usually win). You can frequently play all of these roles on a team during a single mission, and sometimes even in a single battle. And, with the new defiance putting an end to watching your blaster reduced to defenseless impotence, while waiting for that stun or sleep to end, you'll always have something useful to do while in battle. Finally, regarding aesthetics, with this build you get to hear a variety of sound effects and have a variety of colors splashing and arcing their way across your monitor.
The experiences upon which I based most of this guide came from playing this powerset combination from level 1 to 50, while having a lot of fun along the way. There was no power-leveling, no farming, and no influence or other gifts provided by other players or other characters. Only strings of 1s and 0s got hurt.
As a caveat before beginning, this is just one way to build and think through how to play a blaster. If you have fun using powers or following a way of thinking that I didn't bring up here, then I have no interest in telling you that you shouldn't be having fun that way, that you should in some way think differently than you do, or any of that kind of nonsense. If you have fun in a different way, good for you.
The organization of what follows is given next:
1. Describing and evaluating powers (and some suggestions about slotting)
2. A possible build order
3. A few thoughts about this build
4. A little soloing video footage
1. Describing and evaluating powers (and some suggestions about slotting)
Regarding slotting, I found so-called 'franken-slotting' with IO sets to be very helpful, while leveling up. IOs from sets that enhance two or more attributes of a given power, in the same IO, offer better overall enhancement values than if you just used SOs or IOs that only enhance one attribute of a power. This also allowed me to slot enough endurance modification enhancement values to have a viable option to keep mobs fully drained of endurance, while sacrificing relatively little of the damage potential of short circuit, among other benefits. I focused on acquiring cheap set IOs (such as IOs from the Ruin set for ranged damage attacks) because the character that I played through the game with the build described here paid for everything herself. And I find it very dull and boring to farm the amount of influence needed to get the really good IOs. Instead of aiming for 'optimal', I aimed for 'good enough' slotting and enhancements, and I was happy with the results.
For further details about powers that are not mentioned here, refer to Red Tomax's invaluable online resource called City of Data.
[u]Electrical Blast[u]
Electrical blast does energy damage, which is not heavily resisted by most mobs. It is a relatively endurance-friendly blaster primary, which helps to ease endurance management issues that can result from the endurance costs associated with ice manipulation powers. Its key secondary effects are endurance drain and (for some powers) stopping foe endurance recovery, which together provide another option for damage mitigation. Electrical blast powers also return what amounts to a fairly minor amount of endurance to your blaster when hitting foes, when the chances and possible amounts of endurance return are considered.
It is worth mentioning, for those who are new to electrical blast, that some noteworthy enemy types strongly resist endurance drain, such as elite bosses, arch-villains, and sappers. Other tools are needed to mez and/or defeat these kinds of foes, instead of endurance drain.
Charged Bolts and Lightning Bolt (available at level 1)
These are the key ranged single target attack powers. Lightning bolt hits hard enough that even when blapping I routinely mix it into my attack chain. I had these powers 5-slotted by level 20, 6-slotted by the early 30s. Especially because these are key powers to use when mezzed, I like having them up as often as possible. I slotted for accuracy, damage, and recharge.
Ball Lightning (available at level 2)
Because this can affect up to 16 targets, damage is decent, and it recharges in a little over 8 seconds with heavy slotting for recharge, this is a staple AOE power. Damage is mostly damage-over-time (DOT), but the DOT component completes itself quite quickly. When soloing, I often open with aim or build up, then ball lightning, and then follow up with charged bolts and lightning bolt to finish off a minion as the DOT component of ball lightning completes itself. Because of the endurance-friendly nature of electric blast, I freely use ball lightning as a third single-target attack, when fighting difficult single mobs. I six-slotted Ball Lightning by the mid-20s with accuracy, damage, recharge, and endurance reduction. I recommend picking up ball lightning very early, even as early as level 2 or level 4.
Short Circuit (available at level 6)
Short circuit has two main drawbacks. First, it has a 3 second casting time. Second, it is a PBAOE attack, requiring that you move close to melee range to use it. Despite this, short circuit is often referred to as one of the crown jewels of the electric blast set. This is because it has a huge radius (20 yards), it can hit up to 16 mobs at once, it does respectable damage, it has an accuracy bonus, it sets all mob endurance recovery to zero for 10 seconds, and it drains a base level of 35% of a mob's endurance bar in one shot, when used by a blaster. With heavy slotting for endurance modification, endurance drain can be raised to close to 70% of a mob's endurance total in one shot. I recommend using set IOs to increase accuracy, damage, endurance modification (which increases endurance drain from mobs), and recharge. I aimed for about 95% recharge, as to me that was the most important attribute, to be able to fully drain mobs in two castings (while hasten was active). I took short circuit at level 28 and I had it six-slotted by level 31, in preparation for hard hitting bosses and all the mezzes that await blasters who journey into the 30s and beyond.
The large radius on short circuit was very handy when paired with ice patch, especially while soloing. An ice patch would first knock down a hard hitting boss that was trying to close to melee range, then I could stand my blaster within the radius for short circuit and fire it off twice, while the boss flopped around like a fish on the ice patch and had no opportunity to land a melee attack. After short circuit had been landed twice, the boss was essentially already defeated because with tesla cage and short circuit keeping endurance recovery at zero, the boss would have zero endurance until it was arrested. Also, the large radius of short circuit allowed me to position my blaster above battles using hover, out of melee range, while still hitting many foes with short circuit.
Finally, short circuit benefits from having hasten and plenty of global recharge in your build. The more quickly you can overlap applications of short circuit, the more quickly mobs have their endurance brought down to zero.
Aim (available at level 8)
For burst damage, to help your holds land, to overcome perception debuffs, and to overcome high defenses possessed by some mobs, I would rate this power as a must. You don't absolutely *need* aim early, and perhaps you'd rather have tesla cage in its place. I generally prefer to take aim early on a blaster. Missing less and doing more damage sounds good to me, especially before SOs when the damage boost from aim provides a larger percentage increase in the overall damage done by any given attack. I put two extra slots into aim quite quickly, put three level 25 recharge IOs into those slots when my blaster turned level 22, and left aim slotted this way until level 50. Using other IOs this could be made better, I realize, but I found the slotting described here acceptable.
Zapp (available at level 12)
I found I didn't need Zapp. But, I think that has a great deal to do with my playstyle, and not because Zapp is necessarily a bad power choice.
Tesla Cage (available at level 18)
This is a key damage mitigation power for the electric blast set, and especially for the build and playstyle being described here. Tesla cage holds foes at mag 3, which means lieutenants and below will be instantly held. It can be stacked with another hold to hold bosses. It also has two often under-appreciated secondary effects. First, it drains some endurance, as other electrical blast powers do. Second, it stops all endurance recovery for 8 seconds. I try to alternate the casting of tesla cage and short circuit in a rhythm that keeps the endurance total of tough mobs constantly at zero. Four to six slots is likely to be a good choice for tesla cage, focusing on accuracy, hold duration, and recharge. I kept tesla cage at 3 slots from level 25 until the early 30s, increased it to five slots then to reach desired targets for accuracy, hold duration, and recharge, and then added a sixth slot in the mid 40s to make room for an endurance modification IO.
Voltaic Sentry (available at level 26)
Voltaic sentry is a pet that lasts for 60 seconds after being summoned and that recharges 60 seconds after being summoned. It takes roughly 3 seconds to cast, it boosts the 'new' defiance by 20%, it flies fairly slowly after your blaster and seeks to stay close by your blaster, it hardly ever misses if you put a little +ACC into it because of its inherent, hefty accuracy bonus, and it fires charged bolts at a default rate of one every 3.67 seconds. When voltaic sentry is cast while hasten is still in effect, hasten seems to increase its rate of fire, just as it does for lightning storm, from the storm summoning set. To the best of my knowledge, it accepts no buffs other than hasten. Voltaic sentry also does 5% endurance drain every time it hits a foe. It has a 20% chance of inflicting -100% endurance recovery on mobs for 2 seconds.
As little as two extra slots is all you ever really need to get a high degree of utility out of voltaic sentry. I eventually added two more slots (to have 5 slots in total) and put into them two level 45 endurance modification IOs, to help in keeping purple bosses fully drained of endurance.
The two main uses of voltaic sentry are to increase DPS and to help keep bosses fully drained of endurance, when used together with tesla cage and short circuit. Other uses include casting it into areas where you can't see properly, so that it fires at anything hidden from view to your blaster, but that it can see from where it is located. It can be dropped to locations out of your blaster's direct line of vision, which allows for pulls to be executed in total safety (ie: while behind a corner, with ice patch or bonfire set down to prevent mobs from ever reaching you). You can cast it for the 20% bonus to damage from the new defiance, to further increase damage that you'll do, just before unleashing your nuke. And, after nuking, and with your endurance still at zero, tesla cage keeps firing at whatever hasn't already keeled over. Finally, I found that when soloing in caves, voltaic sentry would often signal the location of mobs for me by shooting at them, so that I could more quickly determine the direction in which to look to find whatever was firing from range at my blaster.
The primary risk of using voltaic sentry, mentioned by some, is that you can get extra aggro while in the middle of a battle, or aggro other groups without meaning to do that. I found that with a little care and attention to positioning my blaster and voltaic sentry, the added risk was very minimal. I don't recall ever inviting an extra spawn into battle with voltaic sentry. And, on those rare occasions when I got the attention of another mob from voltaic sentry I had plenty of tools available to defeat the mob in question.
With the utility and extra damage provided by voltaic sentry, and the need for just two extra slots to make it useful, I found voltaic sentinel to be a veritable bargain. I also liked its animation while it floated around behind my blaster. Overall, I was very happy with voltaic sentry.
Thunderous Blast (available at level 32)
Nuking is my favorite thing to do as a blaster. Its fun to see about a dozen mobs do the dance that they always do together after being arrested with thunderous blast, for a couple of seconds, before they all quietly fall over together. Its kind of like watching a crowd of people do the macarena, but with a different ending. Thunderous blast is an even more pleasant nuke to use because it can be used from range. With six slots and some frankenslotting through IOs, you can have good accuracy, very high damage, very high recharge, and moderate endurance modification. If you have a moderate amount of endurance modification slotted into thunderous blast, and especially if you also use short circuit before or afterward, you can drain all endurance from anything not resistant to endurance drain (even purple bosses). Thunderous blast stops mob endurance recovery for 20 seconds, which means that anything still alive and that you fully drain will not be able to escape quickly or attack with anything other than brawl for a fairly long period of time.
In many teams I used thunderous blast more or less as soon as it came up, then I'd go stand beside a mob that seemed a likely candidate for a casting of transference. Voltaic sentry would shoot at anything still left standing while I waited for transference to connect. If there was a little endurance left in some mobs and aggro wasn't fully under control by the tank, I could pop a blue inspiration, then cast short circuit, and fully drain mobs before waiting for transference. This usually worked quite well because mobs with no endurance pose little threat and because there are such a large number of fire / kin controllers that can be found on teams in the 30s and 40s.
[u]Ice manipulation[u]
In exchange for offering better damage mitigation tools than energy, electric, and fire manipulation, ice manipulation offers lower burst damage, lower damage per second of power activation time (DPA) and lower damage per endurance point spent (DPE) for its attack powers than these other three other primaries. As I was not primarily focused on blapping, the lost damage was of little concern to me and the added options for damage mitigation were highly welcome.
Chilblain (required power, taken at level 1)
Chilblain delivers a mag 3 immobilize, along with debuffing mob recharge and movement speed. It does reasonable damage, but in the form of damage over time (DOT), rather than up front and all at once. Slotting was kept at 1 accuracy until the mid 40s, at which point I added in 4 more slots to further increase accuracy and to increase damage and immobilization duration.
Frozen Fists (available at level 2)
Frozen fists is a single target melee attack that has a shorter animation time and a faster recharge time than ice sword. But, it does less damage than ice sword, per swing, and it has a lower -recharge, -speed debuff. This is still a respectable choice and, as long as you can put together a steady chain of attacks, without breaks, you would probably give little to nothing away from your DPS by selecting frozen fists over ice sword. If I ever eliminated voltaic sentry from this build, I'd slot up frozen fists instead to have 3 good melee attacks (ice sword, frozen fists, and freezing touch).
Ice Sword (available at level 4)
DPA is essentially identical for frozen fists and ice sword, when you compare activation times and damage done. But, ice sword is more stylish and dramatic, plus it delivers more damage in one swing. With electrical blast not having the third single target blast of ice, fire, or sonic, there is a little more room for attacks that have a longer activation, such as ice sword. In the end, ice sword probably adds slightly more than frozen fists to an electric/ice attack chain, given that this build is not hurting for available activation time for attacks, the way that a sonic/ice or ice/ice blaster might.
Chilling Embrace (available at level 10)
Chilling embrace offers some impressive foe debuffs (-14% damage and a hefty level of -speed and -recharge) and I know that some swear by it. Still, I didn't take it. When soloing, I never needed it because I had plenty of other tools available. When on teams I'm either at range, where chilling embrace does nothing useful, or I'm in melee, where mobs are usually either held or I don't want their aggro. Also, I'd rather not fuss with endurance management issues that might be associated with using it. Plus, I'm not overly fond of toggles on blasters because mez happens so often that re-toggling cuts into my fun level. Finally, the presence of both ice patch and shiver in this build further reduces the possible contributions of chilling embrace.
If I had taken frozen fists instead of voltaic sentry, and I had been more consistently fighting in melee as a blapper, I might have been more tempted to take chilling embrace.
Build Up (available at level 16)
I would rate this power as a must have and I recommend taking it at level 16, when it first comes available. Higher burst damage and better accuracy really improves your ability to handle tough battles, and also the speed at which you level. I put a second slot into this at level 17, and then a third slot early into the 20s. I put in three vanilla level 25 recharge IOs and left slotting at that.
Ice Patch (available at level 20)
Ice patch offers mob knockdown, -recharge, -jump, and -speed, all in one package. Put a single recharge into it and you can have it down on the ground 100% of the time, with some slight overlap in applications of it. You need to be on the ground to cast an ice patch, and it comes out as a PBAOE effect. Snag ice patch at 22, right after getting stamina. Its a great tool for assisting a tank, corner pulls, and creating a zone of safety for squishy types, among other uses.
As one 'battle story', ice patch made soloing the final save the henge mission in the Croatoa arc into an easy affair. I merely kept dropping an ice patch just behind a fence (the fence closest to where the just-rescued mystics were doing their thing) to handle the waves of enemies that come during the 15 minute timer at the end of that mission. Every hooligan and rascal that came jumped over the fence, and then slipped and fell on the ice patch. The substantial majority of enemies that jumped onto the ice patch never even got off a shot before being defeated.
Shiver (available at level 28)
It is all too easy to underestimate how powerful shiver can be. It affects a maximum of 10 enemies, which in large teams means that some mobs in any typical spawn will not be affected in a single casting. Nothing flashy happens when you cast shiver, except that sometimes you get a sudden increase in aggro directed at your blaster. And, the 'shiver' cone comes out from your blaster at a very wide angle (135 degrees) and it has a depth of 60 feet, which makes it is relatively easy to aggro extra groups, if you're not careful when using it.
Still, you reduce mob running speed and recharge by 65% by casting shiver. The -recharge alone leads to about a 40% drop in incoming damage and mezzes, if you hit all members of an enemy spawn with it. The reduction in movement speed leads to an even greater reduction of incoming damage than the raw number for -recharge would suggest. This is true because mobs trying to get up after being knocked down and mobs trying to reposition themselves to fight in melee take longer to reach their destinations, while under the effects of shiver.
If there's a power in another blaster secondary that provides such a high level of damage mitigation as shiver does, I'm not aware of it. Shiver is also very helpful for keeping mobs
in harm's way, for AOEs, and by preventing runners from escaping. Finally, the wide angle and good depth to shiver's cone makes it very easy to 'tag' up to 10 enemies, with little effort needed to optimize positioning before casting it. Just target an enemy on the fringe of a battle, get outside of that mob, then cast shiver. Your blaster will automatically turn and fire, tagging most or all of the spawn.
Giving a bit more detail about shiver and its uses, I found shiver most helpful on smaller to medium sized teams that were in a little over their heads with the mobs they were fighting. Battles in which the team's life bars might otherwise be dipping into orange, then into red, and then into defeats would instead go very smoothly, with the consistent use of shiver. It was also very helpful on large teams that were in a bit over their heads. But, in large teams I found that good aggro control by a tank or kheld was usually important to avoid risking sudden defeat from the kind of rapid increase in aggro that can result from using shiver.
On teams that were steamrolling everything, it was sufficient to keep pouring out damage and shiver wouldn't get used. Also, some mobs are heavily resistant to -speed and -recharge (council wolves, AVs, and EBs, for example), and shiver wasn't usually all that helpful against heavily resistant mobs.
I recommend two accuracies and a slow or two in shiver. I didn't find casting shiver particularly taxing on endurance, and so I never bothered slotting for endurance reduction. I don't believe the effects of multiple castings of shiver, at least from the same source, stack together in their effects. Plus, the effects of shiver last for 18 seconds and it recharges in 12 seconds. Thus, slotting for recharge is unimportant.
Freezing Touch (available at level 35)
This is another great power. Take this at level 35 and slot it up right away. Freezing touch delivers a mag 3 hold and very good damage, even though damage is given as damage-over-time. Stacking freezing touch with tesla cage allows you to hold bosses, which is very handy in a wide variety of situations. I recommend setting the accuracy enhancement value to your desired level (I aim for the 60s or above because I don't want to miss with holds), then aim for enhancement values for hold duration and recharge in the 80s or higher, and then focus on boosting damage with any remaining slots after hitting those enhancement value targets.
As soon as you get freezing touch you have the ability to quickly stack holds on bosses, and that opens up a new set of options for solo and team play. For example, once aggro has been established on a team, you can set up an initial hold on a boss with tesla cage, hit the f key to approach the boss, and then cast freezing touch when you close to melee range. I could then drop an ice patch and begin casting short circuit and ball lightning, while mixing in tesla cage, freezing touch, ice sword, and lightning bolt on the boss. If hasten was active, then many nearby mobs would be out of endurance in seconds and at least some of them would likely be flopping up and down on the ice patch. This kind of judo, which turns a purple boss from a menace into an anchor for the team to rally around, turned around quite a few team battles that had been going badly. I should perhaps mention that I used this particular tactic on large teams only on the fringes of battles against significantly higher level carnies, malta, COT, lost, or devouring earth, unless I consistently had clear mind on my blaster, because mezzes are so numerous when fighting these enemies that the risk of losing control over the purple boss would have been very high.
Frozen Aura (available at level 38)
Some like frozen aura and they get a lot of use out of it. I was happy with the other tools that I had available, both when soloing and when on teams, and I didn't feel any need to take it.
I don't know what to say beyond this about frozen aura because I'm reluctant to say much about powers that I've never used and don't understand.
[u]The Fire Epic Powerset:[u]
The fire epic set increases the number of control options available to your blaster and allows for the option of picking up a self-resurrection power.
Char (available at level 41)
Char is a very good power choice, which when six-slotted for accuracy, hold, recharge, and damage, contributes a non-negligible amount of damage and a mag 3 hold. It also provides you with 2 ranged holds, when paired with tesla cage, allowing you to hold a boss from the relative safety of Being Far Away.
I recommend taking this power first, when choosing the fire epic powerset.
I had the same slotting and enhancement priorities for char as for freezing touch. I brought both char and freezing touch to six slots as soon as possible.
Bonfire (available at level 41)
Bonfire is an AOE auto-hit knockback power (mag 6.231) that can be cast at a distance of 60' and that does 5.56 fire damage per frame to anything that stands within 25 feet of its center point. You do not need a direct line of sight to cast bonfire at a particular location, which allows you to use it to pull or to defuse alpha in perfect safety, when it is placed well.
Bonfire has both strong detractors and strong proponents. After using it extensively from level 44 to level 50, I am firmly in the latter camp. I'd never take bonfire before char. Still, I found bonfire *very* helpful when soloing Malta bosses and Carnie ring mistresses and master illusionists, amongst other uses. I could drop bonfire, then stack two holds before the boss could get up and hold me (Malta boss) or put a Mask of Vitiation on me (Carnie ring mistresses). I kept dark servants and their hefty accuracy debuffs from chill of the night away from my blaster by dropping bonfire under master illusionists. Also, after casting bonfire under a hovering, phased master illusionist, they went through a forced turning in the air animation after they came out of being phased, and got hit with knockback from bonfire. This may have been helpful to my blaster, although I cannot guarantee this particular point. In more general terms, potentially bothersome encounters with many end-of-act bosses became simple, as long as both tesla cage and char hit after knocking them on their backsides with bonfire.
In even more general terms, possible uses for bonfire include area denial, chain-knockback of mobs in tight quarters, defusing the alpha strike when a tank is not present, saving teammates when they're close to being overwhelmed, covering retreats, and minor incremental damage when fighting mobs that are resistant to knockback (ie: AVs and EBs) or that are consistently kept in place with powers that prevent knockback (certain immobilizes and holds, ...). As a couple of other concrete uses, you can cast it on the reactor core for respec trials and it leads to knockdown with bonus damage, not knockback, against the robots of Neuron and Anti-matter.
Bonfire can be up almost permanently with a pair of level 45 recharge IOs, and that's all the slots I felt that I could spare for it anyways.
Fire Shield (available at level 44)
Fire shield provides resistance against slashing, lethal, fire, and cold damage. It also gives you an opportunity to slot for some nifty IOs. Still, in my experience, most defeats followed being mezzed, and fire shield would not have helped in those situations (unless I bought a very expensive status resistance IO that I could slot into fire shield, which I didn't want to do). I also didn't want to re-toggle fire shield back on over and over after being mezzed, or to fiddle with any endurance management issues that might be associated with running a toggle. In the end, I preferred to rely on active defences and do without this armor.
Rise of the Phoenix (RotP) (available at level 47)
This is a self-rez on a long recharge that heals, restores endurance, and mezzes foes with knockback and stun. I took it at level 47, when it first came available, to get the most utility possible out of it. The animation is fun to watch. A bonfire erupts below your feet, blasting foes everywhere as you spiral upward into the air, rising up from the ashes. The temporary immunity to damage is very helpful, when you use it. Its also a team friendly power because, being a squishy blaster, you're one of the most likely candidates to be defeated quickly after your team gets into trouble.
I found that RotP added to the fun of playing my blaster by reducing the boring interval that often follows a defeat, where you lay there face down on the ground doing nothing, waiting for an opportunity to rez without getting immediately knocked down again, or where you're hoofing it back from the hospital to the mission. It was also gratifying to express my (ahem) disapproval about being defeated by blowing mobs every which way when resurrecting my blaster.
Overall, I was very happy with RotP. I put a level 45 heal IO into the default slot and added no further slots. It wasn't needed often enough to justify any slotting for recharge.
2. A possible build order (the one I followed, and enjoyed)
1. lightning bolt
1. chilblain
2. charged bolts
4. ball lightning
6. ice sword
8. aim
10. hasten
12. swift
14. super speed
16. build up
18. health
20. stamina
22. ice patch
24. tesla cage
26. voltaic sentry
28. short circuit
30. hover
32. shiver
35. freezing touch
38. thunderous blast
41. char
44. bonfire
47. rise of the phoenix
49. zapp
I'll explain the thinking behind this build order, beginning with the caveat that this is just one approach among many.
In the early levels, providing lots of raw damage is enough to quickly level up, and with few defeats. Also, devoting lots of slots to skills that boost damage early on allows for endurance reduction slotting, which helps the earlier levels fly by even faster. Since teams tend to pick blasters for damage, building for damage is likely to be appreciated by your teammates in the early levels, as well.
Looking at specific skills, I took ball lightning early to have some AOE to bring to teams and a fourth ranged attack to fight at a distance, for those situations in which fighting in melee would have been unhealthy. I selected ball lightning over short circuit early on because ball lightning has a quicker casting animation, quicker recharge, about 10% higher damage, and superior range. Ice sword serves as a high damage complement to the ranged attacks, providing a rough substitute for the third single-target blast that some other sets have (blaze, bitter ice blast), and that many have stated they wished electrical blast also offered.
Once the early and mid-20s have been reached, picking skills that offer damage mitigation starts to have a lower cost, in terms of damage potential given up in exchange for power choices and slots devoted to damage mitigation. Ice patch needs only the base slot to be effective, which is appealing at a point in time when slots are difficult to come by. Plus, ice patch really helps against heavy melee hitters and on teams, which is why it was my first choice for a damage mitigation power. Tesla cage came next to have an answer for sappers, freak stunners and juicers, tsoo sorcerers, crey power tanks, various kinds of banished pantheon shaman, and a variety of other potentially bothersome lieutenants and minions. I invested heavily in short circuit right after taking it because it became, when put together with ice patch and tesla cage, a powerful antidote to heavy hitting bosses that move to melee range (ie: bres and fiends in Croatoa, freak tanks, devoured, warwolves, ...). I put the nuke off until level 38 because, even though nuking while on large teams is my favorite part of playing a blaster, I wanted to first solidify slotting on my more frequently used powers.
The epic powers were all about more mezzing options, until Zapp. Zapp adds another playstyle option, a way of maximizing damage done in burst fashion, from the time a mob gets hit for the first time (with Zapp) until it drops. It can also take down runners quite well. It is certainly not essential.
3. A few thoughts about this build
Part of what I found enjoyable about this build was the thematic harmony of having a super character that uses elemental powers. Another part of what made this build enjoyable, especially on teams, was the variety of ways that different elemental powers could be blended together, depending on team size, composition, skill levels, terrain, and mob levels and abilities. The wide variety of tools available with this build lends itself to a playstyle that follows the spirit of Skysaw64's treatise on "Freeform Domination", which can be found
here. If you find his philosophy of how to approach COX appealing, you'd probably find this build or a similar build a lot of fun to play.
On a related topic, the amount of fun I'm having usually sinks rapidly when my characters are mezzed and able to do literally nothing, except use a break free. I find that the new defiance makes blastrollers a lot of fun to play because I can be constantly active. A blastroller can contribute a non-trivial amount of damage even while mezzed, while controllers can only do that once they have pets because they themselves can take no action while mezzed. Also, with the new defiance you can lay down AOE or single target debuffs and controls with less concern about being mezzed because mobs have no off switch to use against a blastroller, beyond defeating them outright.
4. A little soloing video footage.
I used WeGame software to do a little video recording of solo play with my blaster Wizard of Elements, on the Freedom server, with whom I followed the build and playstyle outlined here. Most encounters are straightforward, as these video clips indicate, and its on teams where you get to utilize all the tools available through this build. I tried also doing video clips of team play. But, my computer doesn't seem to handle that very well, and there is also the issue of getting the consent of all teammates before recording their actions. And so, in the end, I only have video clips of solo play.
The sound quality is not as good as it could be and I recommend setting the volume down to one bar in WeGame, when watching the videos. The video clips can be viewed in a regular internet browser, and links to them are given below:
Wizard of Elements vs KoA, door mission
Wizard of Elements vs KoA, cave mission
Rescuing soldiers in the Shadow Shard
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PS: My thanks to Wintercat and Ipso_Facto for their feedback on an earlier draft of this build guide.
