A powerleveler's guide to blasters (very long)

Hi gang. I've been reading these forums quite a bit, but haven't
posted until now. I thought it time to give something back.

This guide will help you build the best blaster you possibly can.
By best, I mean most efficient, from a power-gaming perspective.
If you prefer building characters for role-playing reasons, that
is fine too but this guide is not for you. This guide is for the
person who wonders why he gets killed all the time while other
players steamroll through the levels.

I'll repeat, this is a pure powergamer's guide. You don't need a
guide to have fun, every bit of advice here is about building and
playing a character who will level as quickly as possible, die as
little as possible, etc. The one thing I do not do is suggest any
exploits. All the advice I give is advice I am reasonably
confident will never become obsolete due to nerfs. Of course, you
never can tell but I avoid any obvious exploits that will almost
certainly be fixed.

Just so you know I have some experience, my main is a level 40
energy/devices blaster. My current alt is a level 26 assault
rifle/devices blaster (yes I think devices is far better than the
other secondaries.) I have numerous low-level alts, both blasters
and other classes. And I have read there forums a lot, and
collected a lot of good advice and opinions, especially on powers
I have not used yet.


PICKING YOUR PRIMARY

The five primary powers are divided into two groups. Fire and
Assault rifle are AOE power sets. Energy, Ice, and Electricity
are single-target power sets. For leveling speed, AOE is simply
better than single-target. For doing door missions, single target
is better than AOE. Door missions are fun, but the higher you go,
the more AOE has the advantage in leveling.

For soloing, fire and assault rifle blasters will be focusing on
killing large packs of blues to yellows. Ice and energy blasters
will be going after small packs of two to four yellows to reds.
Frankly, electricity blasters should reroll. Electricity is by
far the weakest of the primaries. If powergaming is your thing,
don't take it. And for all you electricity blasters who want to
respond by relating some story to prove you are not weak, stop.
You are. Ok, you are still a blaster, so compared to other
archtypes, you are fine. But compared to Ice or Energy, you are
simply inferior. Sorry, I didn't design the power sets.


PICKING YOUR SECONDARY

Basically you have three choices. Devices has by far the best
powers. The other power sets get buildup. Energy gets buildup at
level four, so it is the best for a quick start. Fire has Fire
Sword Circle, an excellent AOE and therefore is your third
possibility. It works best with Energy or Ice to compensate for
your poor AOE capability.

Before the increase in the damage cap, I would have said pick
Devices, hands down. This was because Buildup is a waste when you
can cap your damage from enhancements. Now this is no longer the
case, so Devices is a tradeoff. No Buildup so you can't do as
much damage as can someone with Buildup. On the other hand, every
one of your shots will do consistently high damage due to
Targeting Drone and the ability to six-slot your attack powers
with all damage. When exping, you will have enough damage to kill
the mobs without needing Buildup to be available. And you get
lots of other good powers. I still think it is the best choice
overall.

Energy is a quick-starter, you'll definitely do better between
levels four and sixteen (i.e. between when you get buildup and
when Fire gets it). But, those levels are easy regardless. I
think it is not the best long-term decision but it is good for a
new player to whom the low levels aren't that easy.

For Fire, Fire Sword Circle is tempting as a single-target
blaster to get a decent AOE. Of course, Devices gives you Trip
Mine but that is at much higher level. And Trip Mine can be
tricky to use effectively (but fantastic when it is). And you do
get Buildup. Perhaps Fire is not the optimal choice but I think,
for powergaming, it can be a good one.

Electricty and Ice secondaries, in my opinion, just don't cut it.
They have nothing going for them.


PICKING YOUR POWER POOLS

Every blaster should take Stamina. Once again, someone will post
with his wonderful tale of his blaster who gets by without it.
Good for you. From a powergaming perspective, your character
would be better with it.

Next you need a travel power. My suggestion is go for Superspeed.
You should only take Flight if you are already taking Hover since
Flight is so slow that it barely qualifies as a travel power. In
my opinion, Hover is highly overrated as I'll discuss in the
section on melee. Overrated power plus bad travel power plus
extra used up power pool (of your four total) means probably not
the best choice. The keys to Superspeed are first I find it to be
the most useful power for travel and fighting. And second, you
will be taking Hasten eventually so you have the prerequisite and
don't have to use up a power pool. Leaping just doesn't cut it
for me, but that is a matter of preference. I like to do door
missions for fun, and I always regret not having Superspeed on my
current blaster. I tried out Superleap, it just isn't for me.

Let's talk about Hasten. Can you live without it? Yes. Should
you? No. You will get experience faster with Hasten then without.
More importantly, it will make a bigger boost than any other way
of spending one power slot and 4-5 enhancement slots. If you are
a powergamer, you will get Hasten. Depending on your build, you
can delay getting it but sooner or later you will. Getting it
early to unlock Superspeed kills two birds with one stone.

After these two choices, your power pools are for defense.
Defense? "What is this concept?", you say. Aren't we blasters?
Defensive choices are what separate the quick-leveling power
blaster from the people who keep telling us horror stories about
their exp debt. Especially for AOE blasters, you need some
defense. When you are attacking a pack of 10 minions with a boss
or two thrown in, there is a world of difference in how much
damage you take from just a couple of defensive powers. The
reason why blasters you read about are able to crush pack after
pack of whites/yellows for great exp and you die is because you
aren't using a few defensive powers and they are.

Devices is fantastic because it gives you both Cloaking Device
and Smoke Grenade for defense. If you don't take Devices, Stealth
from the concealment pool is hard to pass up. Superspeed negates
its speed penalty and combines with it to give basically full
invisibility. Invisibility is fantastic and you get a hefty
defensive boost in combat. What's not to like? Combat Jumping
costs almost no endurance, gives defense, and makes you resistant
to immobilize in addition to helping you get around. Manuevers
from the Leadership pool is a solid defense boost. Hover adds
defense. The Fighting pool has some defense in it, but it
requires too many power choices to unlock in my opinion. As good
as it is for a tank or scrapper, I'd advise blasters to steer
clear of it.

My suggested power pools choices are: Hurdle, Health, Stamina,
Combat Jumping, Manuevers, Hasten, and Superspeed. If you are not
going Devices secondary, I would suggest dropping either Combat
Jumping or Manuevers to get Stealth. You can drop Superspeed for
Super Leap. I prefer Superspeed because it is useful during
combat. If you go Leap, you will be switching it off for Combat
Jumping while fighting anyway (they can't be used at the same
time). Plus, cooking around door missions with Superspeed is just
incredibly handy.


PICKING YOUR PRIMARY POWERS

For Assault Rifle, at lower level you will function as a
single-target blaster using Slug, Burst, and Sniper Rifle. Once
you get Flamethrower 6-slotted and move to Dark Astoria, you are
an AOE blaster. At level 22, with six SO damage enhancements, one
flamethrower makes one dead pack of zombies. That can take you
all the way up to 30. Finally, at 32 you will get Full Auto which
once six-slotted means one dead pack of just about anything.
Buckshot and M30 grenade simply don't cut it at high level and
you don't have infinite enhancement slots to waste on them. It is
more efficient to just pass them by.

For Fire Blast, it is all about Fire Ball and Fire Breath. Fire
Blast is helpful mostly at low-level. At high level, you'll use
it for killing stragglers that survive your AOEs - out of a big
pack, you'll miss a few which you may want to finish off (or you
may just move on and ignore any survivors). Blaze and Blazing
Bolt give you, finally, the ability to deal efficiently with
bosses. There is nothing wrong with making your fire blaster more
well-rounded and you will have enhancement slots to spare.

For Energy blasters, Power Bolt, Power Blast, and Power Burst
along with Sniper Blast are it. The key to an effective
single-target blaster is having the three non-sniper attacks and
cycling them over and over. Power Burst is short-range, yes, but
melee is no problem as I explain below. With knockdown, it is
easy to safely get close enough to use Power Burst even on bosses
(if needed). Mostly I like it as a minion killer. Snipe a minion,
it is dead. Power Blast and Power Bolt another. Power Burst and
Power Bolt a third. One 'salvo' of all your powers plus a
recharge of Power Bolt (which is fast) means three dead minions.
This is your bread-and-butter exping method. Your AOEs are too
low-damage to be of any real consequence. The best use for them
is to do enough damage to a large group so that one Power Blast
or Power Burst can kill them. In this case, you can double-up a
Power Bolt to function as a third killing power (yes it does less
damage than the other two but it recycles very fast). So you
could kill a pack of 6 minions by Explosive Blast or Energy
Torrent then Bolt/Bolt, Blast, Burst twice.

Since it was hard for me to find this information as an Energy
blaster, I'll include it here. How much damage do our AOEs do?
Not much. six-slotted with damage, at level 40, they both top out
around 120 damage to an even con. Explosive Blast does slightly
less damage than Energy Torrent. Power Push does basically zero
damage. I was hoping 'minor' damage meant about what Power Bolt
does, 160ish damage six-slotted. Rather it does 20 damage with no
slots, or about 60 damage six-slotted. And that is with the
'increase' in damage in the last patch.

Ice Blast functions similarly to Energy just using Ice Bolt, Ice
Blast, and Bitter Ice Blast instead. Your disadvantage is you
have no snipe, so you don't get to start out a fight by instantly
dropping one opposing minion. The advantage is that Bitter Ice
Blast has better range than Power Burst (though it is still
somewhat short) and your activation times are faster. Hasten is
most critical with Ice Blast to get your three attacks cycling as
fast as possible. Frost Breath does acceptable damage and should
be used as your 'weakening' attack to drop mobs into single-shot
range of your heavy nukes, just like for energy.

For all the power sets, the rest of the powers are purely
optional. Aim is good, though not terribly impressive. Its best
use is as a boss-killer to give you the best chance to hit.
Inferno and Nova are both great for that tough fight (they are
really excellent for door missions with big groups which can be
quite fun.) Too bad they recycle so slowly, but adding recharge
enhancements reduces their massive damage, their best quality.
I've never used Blizzard but from what I've read, it
sounds... um... underwhelming. Ice Storm and Rain of Fire are
both endurance-intensive control powers. For Fire, I'd say skip
it. Ice is more a control power set and can make use of the power
better. To me, the key difference is that Ice Storm can be
slotted with Slow Enhancements and is therefore a useful power.
Fire Storm cannot be.

If you've taken electricity, I feel for you. You are a
single-target power set but you lack the third nuke that both Ice
and Energy get. You will need to use Ball Lightning more as a
nuke than as an AOE to get as much firepower as you can. Don't
get me wrong, its not that your damage is all that bad though it
will lag behind Energy a bit without a Power Burst equivelent.
No, its just that the knockback and slow effects of Energy and
Ice are both very good secondary effects. Endurance drain is
basically worthless. I laugh when I hear some Electricity blaster
detail a rare situation in which he neutralized some boss with
his endurance drain. My main is an energy blaster. I too
neutralize bosses, with knockback, as that boss spends his
last few seconds before I waste him on the ground. Plus, I get
that knockback consistently and often in every fight against
every mob I face. And I get a third heavy nuke, heavier than
either of Electricity's nukes to boot.


ENHANCING YOUR POWERS

Here is the most important lesson in enhancing your powers. If
you take a damage power, you will six-slot it. If you can not or do
not want to six-slot a damage power, you should not be taking that
power. The great thing about being a blaster is that the majority
of your slots go to your attack powers, allowing you the luxury
of six-slotting them all. This is why defenders fall much further
behind the damage curve than just the difference in base damage,
they don't have enough enhancement slots to fully slot their
attack powers.

Once you have Stamina and Hasten (and probably even before),
slotting attack powers is easy. Do you have Devices and therefore
Targeting Drone? If yes, slot six damage enhancements. If no,
slot five damage enhancements and one accuracy. If the power has
a big inherent bonus to accuracy, like Fire Breath, you can go
either way though personally I would favor damage. I would rather
miss one or two of a big pack and leave the rest dead rather than
leave them all with a sliver of life left.

Blasters are all about damage, and you will be the most efficient
blaster you can be by recognizing that. Nothing is worse than a
mob living with a pixel of life and needing to waste a whole
additional attack on it to kill it off. The more damage each
attack does, the less likely that is to happen. Are you running
low on endurance before Stamina and thinking endurance reduction
will help more than damage? Think again, having to use an entire
additional attack will use a lot more endurance than you save.
Think recycling your powers faster will help? Get Hasten. Before
that, you probably are waiting on the power to recycle because
your power did not do enough damage to kill the mob off on the
first shot.

Consider this. Imagine a person who slots each attack power with
3 damage, 1 accuracy, 1 endurance, and 1 recharge reduction for a
'balanced' approach. Now consider the device blaster slotting 6
damage instead. He is able to do that because Stamina takes care
of endurance, Hasten takes care of recharge, and Targeting Drone
takes care of accuracy. With SO damage enhancements adding 33% at
even level, the first person is doing two times base damage while
the second is doing three times base damage. Every shot is doing
50% more damage by slotting all damage. Basically, the second
person is doing the same damage on every shot that the first
person is doing with Buildup. A free Buildup on every shot? Sign
me up!

For travel powers, it takes two slots to max out Superspeed (with
SOs), three for Superleap, and four for Flight. You spend so much
time in this game moving around, if you can find the slots, you
might as well make your chosen travel power as good as it can be.

For Stamina, six-slots all the way. Hasten should have five or
six. The last one moves you from a trivial downtime on it to no
downtime. You are probably fine either way. If you have the
slots, go for six, but this is an area you can grab a slot from.

Defensive powers should just get their default one-slot. SOs
normally give a 33% boost, but defense buffs are one of the few
that only get a 20% boost. It just isn't worth it to waste your
slots for that little return until after you've fleshed
everything else out. Its not inherently bad to have more defense,
but it can be difficult finding the slots and I wouldn't weaken
my offense by doing so. Its better to use one more power slot to
pick up another defense skill than it is to spend five slots to
double the effectiveness of a defense skill in my opinion.

For Aim and Buildup, two to three slots is enough to always have
one up (with Hasten), though it is probably enough to leave them
at one slot. For quick exping, you hit Buildup then use your
attacks and by the time Buildup wears off, the fight should be
over. By the time you find your next pack to kill, it will be up
again even with one slot.

Note that once you get Stamina slotted up, endurance will not be
a problem. Before then you might want to slot your toggle powers
with endurance reduction.


WHEN TO TAKE POWERS

The first twenty levels are for getting your primary attacks,
getting your travel power, and getting Stamina. Leave powers that
are not critical for your twenties. You want Stamina by level 22
at the latest. It is that good.

If you are a fire blaster, you get your two primary AOEs (Fire
Vreath and Fire Ball) by level 8, so you want to prioritize your
defense powers. The sooner you have them, the sooner you can
start crushing packs of whites and yellows instead of greens and
blues.

For Assault Rifle, your good AOEs come late. Your early ones,
Buckshot and M30 grenade, are both pretty worthless. Your useful
AOEs are Flamethrower and Full Auto, so you have time before you
can turn into an AOE blaster.

For single-target blasters, defensive abilities are still useful
but not as critical. You really don't have the firepower to kill
more than whites or yellows efficiently for a number of levels,
and white or yellow minions are pretty harmless even without
defensive powers.


SOLOING

First of all, understand that door mission are bad exp. The
higher your level, the worse they become. They are a good change
of pace and can be fun, but when you want to get experience, you
don't want to be doing them.

AOE blasters grind best in hazard zones taking on big packs. Get
used to Perez Park, Boomtown, Dark Astoria, and Crey's Folly,
they will be your zones of choice.

Single-target blasters grind best in city zones taking on small
packs. Door missions are viable longer for you, especially if you
find a good one and keep resetting it. They have nice small
clumps of whites for you to kill. But eventually, your nukes will
be overkill on whites and you'll want to move to the street where
you can find more challenging prey. Get used to King's Row,
Skyway city, Independence port, Brickstown, and Founder's Falls,
you will be spending a lot of grind time in each.

A tip for fighting street mobs. Spawns are done on demand, when a
player gets near them. The mobs have a level range depending on
where they are. However, most often a mob will spawn in level
based on the player who spawned it. So, if the mobs range in
level from 26 to 29 and you are level 26, you'll see a mix. If
you are level 29, you will almost always see only level 29s. This
is good, street fighting less than whites is a waste of time.
But, it means you want to be as alone as you can be. If you have
lower-level players running around triggering the spawns, you
will find yourself frustrated with lots of greens and blues.

Also understand there is nothing wrong with fighting weaker mobs
at low levels. In your 20s and 30s, white mobs are very weak to
you. But low teens, they are tougher. Just because you will
eventually be killing packs of whites or small groups of reds
doesn't mean you can do it at early levels. As a general rule,
you will get better exp by slaughtering masses of mobs weak to
you as compared to taking a longer time to kill fewer weaker
mobs. This is why AOE is better leveling than single-target. If,
at your level, a certain pack of mobs does any appreciable damage
to you, you will get better exp by finding similar mobs a level
or two lower.

Stealth is your friend. With stealth, you can dictate exactly how
the fight starts and always get off the first shot. This is
especially important for AOE blasters. Fire Breath and
Flamethrower are devestating, short range attacks. You want to
move close to get their cone perfectly aligned before you open
the fight. Stealth lets you do that. For Energy blasters, getting
close enough to use Power Burst after your Snipe is helpful. Ice
Blasters generally engage and fight far enough away that the mobs
won't aggro until after you start the fight, so they can best
afford to not have stealth. Even so, it is still a fantastic
power. And both Stealth and Cloaking Device give a hefty defense
boost during the combat as well. Its tough to pass up one of the
stealth powers on a blaster.


GROUPING

Large groups, more than four, are purely for fun. If you want to
get good exp, stick to four or less. Ok, actually you should be
soloing. But when you group, you should be dominating the action.
The game is about damage, blasters are by far the highest damage
class. If you built your character well, grouping revolves around
you. In a small group, basically you pick fights just as you
would solo, just more difficult versions. Everyone who is not a
blaster has one job: make sure you live and make sure you can do
as much damage as possible.

This means if you are an AOE blaster and you do not have a tank
who can hold aggro and let you use your AOEs, the group is bad.
If you are a single-target blaster and you are not going for reds
(and purples when they readjust villian difficulty), the group is
bad. If the team's blasters are not putting out as much damage as
they can to their preferred target, the group is bad.

Don't get me wrong, sometimes you just want to have fun and then
grouping is great. But if you want exp, and want to group, you
will need to carefully monitor how the group unfolds or else your
exp bar is not going to be moving.


WHY MELEE IS NO BIG DEAL

Many blasters love Hover and claim that any melee is death, that
you will always be dead in a hit or two in melee. They are wrong.
Probably they don't have any defensive powers, and suboptimal
builds that do not kill quickly enough. I have a level 40, and I
can tell you that even at level 40 melee is no big deal most of
the time when soloing (grouping and fighting harder mobs is a
different story but a good tank will mean it still isn't much of
a problem). Only very specific mobs are threats in melee and you
will soon learn which. Basically, if it is a generic minion,
don't worry about it. Melee with minions is more of a threat low
level than high level. By level 20, minions are no threat to you.
The mobs you fight will die in seconds, you will have defensive
power choices, a few mobs swinging at you a couple times won't
make any noticeable drop in your health. Pop a health inspiration
whenever you get low on life, they drop like candy.

There are a few mobs that are a threat in melee. Any Boss and
some lieutenants (Freakshow comes to mind) are the ones you do
not want near you. You can use Hover to keep out of melee range,
but you have to waste an entire power pool slot on it, and more
importantly have to take the Flying pool which means one less
pool choice for better defensive powers. Plus you are stuck with
flying as a travel power, because it just is too darn tedious to
drop to the ground, use a travel power, then rehover up over and
over to set up each fight. Moving from pack to pack is constant
when grinding, and Superspeed is the best to do it. A few seconds
multiplied over thousands of packs over your character's career
is a lot of time.

Being afraid of melee, even a little bit, applies mostly to
single-target blasters. For AOE blasters, you are fighting packs
of white or at-most yellow minions and the battles last long
enough to cast one or two AOEs and then your foes are dead. They
will shoot one round of ranged attacks before they drop. You
ignore any bosses or lieutenants. Fire your two shots and move
on. Melee simply never comes up.

It is the single-target blaster who is fighting higher con (and
thus more dangerous) mobs and will be concerned about melee. If
you have Devices, just forget Hover. Throw Caltrops down in front
of you before you attack and melee is never an issue. If you have
Superspeed, just kite. Fire your attacks, and while waiting for
them to recycle, the few seconds, turn on Superspeed, back up to
maximum range again, and turn it off. If you have Hurdle plus
Combat Jumping, jump backwards to accomplish the same thing.
Heck, just turn on sprint and back up. Of course, more often than
not, the mobs are dead in seconds so you don't need to bother
kiting.

The point is, Hover is unnecessary. It works, it just isn't
needed. To me, it is a wasted power pick. At least it does have a
defense boost, so that is one plus for it. If you like Hover, go
for it, just don't assume other blasters need it to survive or
that we die a lot without it.


THE END

Well, that was quite long. I think the template here will help
new blaster powergamers understand how to build and play blasters
efficiently. I'm sure there are some differences of opinion, some
people prefer to play slightly differently than me, but you
certainly won't go wrong building a blaster according to my
guidelines. Feel free to post your own tips and comments!


Kelena, 40 energy/devices
Technobabble, 26 assault rifle/devices
both members of Knight in Tights on Virtue

(plus lots and lots of alts)

Nice. Read the whole thing. 5 Stars.

A lot of well thought out ideas.
Just my 2 cents...
Take flight, its fun.

Nice post. Very good info.

Good stuff! I took Hover/Fly based on what I read from the boards and find it nearly 95% useless. I guess maybe if you didn't have Caltrops/Web gren.. it might be nice to space yourself.

Thanks for the info, that was very good reading.

Fly is incredibly useful... but not for power leveling. Within that scope, SS is best. Great post; 5 stars.

One disagreement: Energy is a viable AoE set. Even before 6-slotting, I was able to kill blues & below with Explosive Blast & Torrent in one salvo with Build Up/Aim. Not nearly as effective as Fire or high lvl AR, but still viable.

Any thought on how to best use the prestige powers, like Nova, to AE mobs? Use them alone or as a followup to an Energy Blast? Skip altogether? Slot as soon as you get it at 32?

Thanks for depressing me about my electricity blaster.
I've not tried any of the other Primaries seriously, but have always felt that it lacked an attack.
However Tesla Cage is great for taking Lts out, or giving you the chance to fight single targets/smal grps more on your terms.
The end-drain is pretty hopeless 99% of the time tho, like you say, personally I'd like to see it replaced with the stun-like effect you sometimes see (but not often enough) with Electricity attacks.

Fly is great for getting out of a bad situation fast. So is jumping, but if you're getting hover, you might as well take fly as well, and save some skill points.

I'm a level 24 Ele/Devices casual power gamer (have the knowledge but not the time) who's read a lot and played a slew of throw-away alts.

Hasten, Stamina, Targeting Drone, Smoke Grenade, two six slotted ranged attacks. Instant blaster formula. After that, mix in secondary powers to round it out.

If you are a pure power game, elec is not ideal. Endurance drain is a non-factor in PvM 99% of the time. Elec lacks the third attack to make a great single target blaster, e.g. Power Burst. Instead of a cone attack like Frost Breath, they get Short Circuit which is PBAoE and puts you in the midst of a pack instead of its edge. They only get one hold instead of Ice's two, which makes Boss lockdown slower and harder.

On the upside - Charged Bolts, Lightning Bolt, and Zapp are all solid with typical damage, reasonable range, and good animation times - no knocks there really. Tesla Cage is a good power. Elec is geared to be a single target blaster so being able to lock down one monster in a pack is valuable - esp if you can lockdown the most annoying one, e.g. the Sorceror. Aim is a "round out the template" power not a defining one but it is still decent. Thunderous Blast is Ranged AoE rather than the more typical PBAoE which is an upside. Energy damage works just fine.

Elec also plays well in a team. No knockback to annoy the tanks or move targets out of the controller's AoE effects. Not AoE based so doesn't attract a lot of hate. Adds a hold that can be stacked with other's. Most of this doesn't matter, of course, since whatever a blaster is attacking soon dies. So knocking something away from a tank shoud be taken as "I'm killing this, attack something else" and attacking it means it no longer needs to be controlled since it will soon be dead. And power gaming AoE blasters should be in teams optimized around doing AoE damage - so hate doesn't matter since the landslide of AoE nukes will kill it all nearly instantly anyway.

All that said, if you don't need to be a pure power gamer munchkin than Elec works just fine as a single target blaster.

Just my humble opinion of course.

*edit* I think the ele stun is purely visual and not a real stun. It just seems like a damage anim the monster plays - landing another attack ends the anim. And it sure seems like the monster attacking will end the anim as well. Oh, and I think the anim is played when end recovery is halted, which is a small % chance effect on the bolts - I believe the guide called it 20% chance to stop end recovery for Charged Bolts.

Electricity is by far the weakest of the primaries. If powergaming is your thing, don't take it. And for all you electricity blasters who want to respond by relating some story to prove you are not weak, stop. You are.

But, but, but.....

Very good post.

This explains a lot better than I could why my Fire Blaster doesn't avoid melee, I just don't start off with it (of course).

At 31, I was killed twice by orange Freak bosses. Yes, I killed them before, but it gets tough when they lob a grenade then run up and try to wack you and annoying when they get down to half HPs and start to run. My mistake was letting the boss get too close. I am avoiding them for the most part now, not worth the trouble.

At 32, I can kill a single red minion easily in 3 shots. (Build, Aim, Fire Bolt, then finishing with Fire Blast or Breath.) A bunch (3-10) of white, yellow and orange minions are np 2-shot killing assuming I have the right angle and position.

Crey's is a nice place to solo. Be careful of those darn packs of yellow bees. They wittled me down fast and are easy to underestimate, but they are tempting one shot kills of 100+ xp per mob. It's just hard to get more than 3 at once in an AOE because they move around too much.

My weakness is toggling targets using tab, I don't use it and it's probably gotten me in trouble a few more times than needed so I have to force myself to get used to tabbing it.

I disagree with skipping Hover and Fly, but at least you gave applicable reasons why. I like Hover myself. I was able to kill large packs of Wolves just by hovering and nuking. I have Fly 3 slotted with fly speed SOs and I can keep up with a friend who has superspeed. Gave him a head start as we went across town to the green tram, and as he was arriving there I was close behind. Before the SO's he'd always beat me and have to tp me, not anymore. Remember, with Superspeed you have to run around buildings and take streets, fly is more convenient for me. Your mileage may vary. I just like having the diversity when I want it and I'm not interested in even being slightly compared to a power gamer.

I like Aim because (like this guide indicated) coupled with Buildup I can solo orange bosses. Buildup, Aim, Blazing Bolt, Fire Blast, Fire Breath (or Blast) all can hit at max. After that it's just whittling it down. I only had to ask for help on a mission once when a purple vampire appeared at the end.

Overall though a good guide for many players because it seems that a lot of you want to race to 40 as fast as possible, then make an alt and race him to 40 too. Too much of a vicious cycle for me. But with the current fixes (and nerfs) it is harder to get in a group. 31 has got be be the ********* level ever because you are too high for TF groups and 2 low for higher groups. The patch forced me to solo. I can no longer group against purple mobs 5 levels above me because I can't hit (when I do) for higher than a whole 3 damage. But that's another story.

[ QUOTE ]
I have Fly 3 slotted with fly speed SOs and I can keep up with a friend who has superspeed.

[/ QUOTE ]

Fly has an immensely lower cap than superspeed does, i can't imagine this ever happening. I'm an SSer and there is no way fly can keep up in raw speed regardless how many enhancers you have.

Superspeed is like 83 mph cap, Fly is like 43 mph (I think or maybe 53). There's a dev post on it somewhere.

Last I timed flight, around level 27 or so, with 1 SO speed, I was going 32 mph.

In any case, superspeed is much faster.

In a city, superspeeders cannot run through building walls. Therefore they are forced to run around streets. Not to mention once in a while overshooting and running into stuff by mistake. I have the advantage here, and if they do get to one side first in a race I am a mere few seconds behind.

In a straightaway with no obstacles, sure they can beat fly. But how many times does your team end up going from one end of a city to another? A whole lot. I'm not talking miles per hour, I'm talking keeping up in the city limits. At 32 with 3 35 SO's it is no longer a hindrance for me, it is even too fast indoors.

With that in mind, fly is excellent for me and I don't regret not having Superspeed.

I am an electric blaster and find lvl'ing pretty easy with the way i work. I usually jump on for a few hours at a time and get about 5000-10000 xp each time i jump on. I can consistently take out a mob one lvl lower than me in about 10 sec. strategy: i turn on electric field, hit BuildUp, then jump in middle of mob (combat jump is on) throw out my electric blast, and before my buildup wears off i hit Short Circuit and by then most all the guys in the mob are dropped. But ur prolly right...fire/ice blasters are prolly doing the same thing to mobs 3 lvls higher than them so my guys is worthless......buy hey... my special effects look waaay cooler!!!!

[ QUOTE ]
Electricty and Ice secondaries, in my opinion, just don't cut it.
They have nothing going for them.

[/ QUOTE ]
Can't argue with you there.

[ QUOTE ]
You should only take Flight if you are already taking Hover since
Flight is so slow that it barely qualifies as a travel power.

[/ QUOTE ]
4 - 40++ SO Fly enhs' in Fly make it as fast as or faster than an equally slotted superspeed. Tested last night There is a speed cap, but there are zones where flying will getcha killed . It's a trade off, the precision flying you can do allow for interesting tactics, as opposed to just running around on the ground. All said, when respec comes i'll probably take superspeed and keep fly, for when running is preffered.

You didn't even touch on ice primary's 2 hold powers. These give us a unique advantage to keep 3 villians held down throughout a fight, or 1 boss and 1 villian. Or, if you can survive the encounter, you can hold an archvillian/monster by yourself. No other blaster can do this as easily and I look forward to pvp . There are plenty of 'optimal' ice threads out there.

Other than that, solid post. Good way to tear it apart and make sense of it all. In the end tho, only do what makes ya happy. No point running around all the time when you always wished you could fly or jump.

Great comprehensive post! I strongly encourage you to at least post a link to it in the Forum on Guides and FAQs.

you didn't even point out the best thing about fly, which makes it hands down far above the rest


you can just put the thing on auto-pilot and alt-tab out and read the web, browse the forum, whatever you wanna do .... just point your nose up and towards the yellow dot... bingo... you dont have to do any work and you dont have to watch it just check back in a bit you'll probably be there... if not just alt-tab again... its so painless

fly is just too good to pass up

[ QUOTE ]
you didn't even point out the best thing about fly, which makes it hands down far above the rest

you can just put the thing on auto-pilot and alt-tab out and read the web, browse the forum, whatever you wanna do .... just point your nose up and towards the yellow dot... bingo... you dont have to do any work and you dont have to watch it just check back in a bit you'll probably be there... if not just alt-tab again... its so painless

fly is just too good to pass up

[/ QUOTE ]

Agree with your post. I use the time to chat with the supergroup. But, the slow speed still drives me nuts now (lvl 27). I will probably switch to superspeed on a respec (if we ever get one). Plus Fly is useless indoors (I only run anyway). I agree with the original poster, in that, hovering out of melee range is a non-issue. Blasters do so much damage, no one gets close to me. Esp. with caltrops (which I rarely need to use).

I have to disagree with this post a bit I'm an ELE/Cold Blaster and have been playing these types of game for years. I have been playing a week a few hours a day and my blaster is lvl 21 and im doing this grinding, door missions solo and grp and TF with friends only 1. Pick your char based on what you like, cause for the PL it about strat yes the other balster might have it a little easier then me, but I dont like things easy.

I chose the ele/cold baster cause thats what I wanted. I can solo or grp does not matter and lvl just as fast. Its all about strat and knowing your char abilities and weaknesses, for example lvl's 1 to 20 were pretty easy and the strat was easier for me. Hit lvl 20 got new contacts new missions harder mobs and before I new it bam 5k debt.

Thought about what I was doing and got a new strat down and less than a day no debt and lvl 21 here I am. So its about haveing fun and playing the char you want to play. Also I died take fly as well and no other special powers yet. So dont be discioureaged that you made an ele/anything blaster.

Great post. I agree with pretty much everything. Just a few points:

[ QUOTE ]
Electricty and Ice secondaries, in my opinion, just don't cut it.
They have nothing going for them.

[/ QUOTE ]

I mostly agree with this. However, I think you are highly over-rating Fire sword circle, and other than getting build-up early, energy is pretty much crap too. I think all the secondaries other than devices are equally crap (well, elec is still the worst of the worst).

The ice secondary does have one thing going for it – it has the best root by far. Chilblain provides a good attack slow as well as an immobilize, so it provides for some damage mitigation.

Also, you never make mention of Ice’s holds or slows. The damage mitigation provided by holds/slows is 100x better than the paltry 5-10% def bonuses you get from pool powers. Why even bother with super speed/stealth/kiting when I can hold several mobs and take zero damage? Not to mention that holds make several types of mobs practical to kill, that other sets would have to pass up on (tsoo sorcs come to mind). In fact, the only thing that saves the elec set (for me anyway) is that it gets a hold.

Also, I agree with you that hover/fly is not as great as many make it out to be. However, I still see it as being useful for Energy or Ice. As you pointed out, they have to pick small groups of mobs the proper level to get optimum xp. Fly is by far the best scouting power, so in real time spent looking for outdoor mobs, I think flight will help with level speed.

I have a lvl 32 Ice/Ice and you're pretty far off on your Ice comments

1) Ice Secondary has at least 3 good powers, maybe 4. Buildup, enough said. Chillblain can hold extremely well, Ice Patch is very useful for bosses. If they arent aggro'd on you, walk up and drop a patch on him. They wont attack again. Shiver is the best AoE slow in the game. Groups of mobs wont even move after landing it.

2) Ice doesnt do AoE? How about Ice Storm, Frost Breath, and Blizzard? All AoE attacks. Granted Ice Storm and Blizzard dont do massive AoE Damage but they Slow, Debuff, and panic. Frost Breath can take even lvl mobs down to half health in one shot.

3) Our attack animations are the fastest in the game. I can get Ice Bolt, Blast, and BiB all off before a fire blaster or energy blaster can get thru their 2nd attack. So in essence, I can deal damage faster. My animations have 1 second activation.

Oh and did I mention I can hold bosses by myself with 2 holds?

Granted, Ice has the worst ultimate of all..blizzard is godawful. Nova and Inferno flat out own it, but I hope the Devs will adjust it soon

Ice is underrated by you dramatically

Excellent post. You should put this in the Faq section, this I'm sure will be a great help to many.

Devices is excellent not only because of the drone, but the Smoke Grenade as well. With smoke grenade, it's like giving your group a great +DEF bonus! I could smoke grenade a group of lvl 35 werewolves (8-10 of them), and with combat jumping and cloaking device, I would get hit once before FA/FT would finish them off. I have no fear of death to melee, and if I die, I learn from my mistakes and I go back at it, this time smarter. With the new hasten DEF, it should be even nicer for those who take these defensive skills. We're not tanks, but it is nice to be able to stand there and take the heat when your tank's provoke hasn't recharged and you're laying down a massive AE on 20 pissed off mobs.