A powerleveler's guide to blasters (very long)
By
45th_Parallel,
Posted on: 2004-06-14 07:36 in Player Guides
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And to the person above who asked the question why not just play a blaster? The answer is simple but probably beyond your FOTM mind to comprehend. It's because I want to play a scrapper but at the same time don't like to play an archetype that's gimped relative to Blasters. Wow, wasn't that simple!
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The point is that no one is forcing you to play a scrapper. If they are SO bad, why are you playing one? Since its a choice whether to pick that archetype and continue developing it, IT CANT BE THAT BAD IF YOU KEEP PLAYING A SCRAPPER. Your actions dictate it. Are scrappers worse off than blasters? Maybe, but they arent so far off that you wont play one any more, so things arent that bad.
Get real and realize that you are just some schmoe who has very little to contribute to this game. If you think that blasters have it so easy just play one and be happy. It's like voting. If everyone would just play a blaster the devs would have to make the other archetypes better. It would be obvious in their data mining. But you keep playing a scrapper, and reinforcing with hard data that scrappers in fact arent so bad. They whine a lot on the boards because that's the scrapper mentality right now, but the data just doesnt support the kind of changes you want right now. Deal with it.
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I think the developers made a bit of mistake towards the end of beta when they added so many improvements to what was certainly already the most popular archetype with almost no beta testing.
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Were you in beta? Blasters were not the most popular by any means. Axe tankers were a big issue for much of beta, followed by Reflex scrappers which were out of hand. Then Dark Melee scrappers, and after that Fire and Illision controllers. Blasters by comparison were relatively weak. The scrappers, tankers, and controllers were constantly at the top of the charts for levelling rates and kill acheivements. If you were in beta I dont know how we have such different recollections of things, unless its because you were only in the last few days or so.
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To me this seemed to be a bizzarre move and I had a feeling this may turn out to be a problem later. Lo and behold the first level 40 character came to reality in 2 weeks and he/she was a blaster. That was only the beginning, in the next few days more level 40's appeared and they were all blasters! As you can imagine this is not one of those times I enjoy getting a prediction right.
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Just play a blaster and get over it. Seriously. I recommend this to all whiney scrappers out there. Come back to your scrapper when they "fix" everything for you.
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You reinforce my belief that you are nothing but a FOTM player. Only a FOTM player would say something as ridiculous as "if you think X is powerful then just play it"
You really just don't get it. I don't like to play a class just because it is more powerful. Rather, I want ALL classes to be balanced and equal so that my choice of playing one archetype over the other will be based purely on style rather than on power. Its a simple concept but will forever be beyond your ability to understand because you don't care what archetype you play as long as they are the most powerful.
FOTM players don't care what archetype they play, heck they can have fun playing any archetype as long as they are powerful. Not all of us are FOTM nuts that's why we care about such things as balance because we really don't want to quit this game but would rather quit it rather than be forced to play a blaster just to be competitive. Stop being an idiot and start realizing that just because someone doesn't want to play the most powerful class it means he has no right to bemoan an imbalance!
Your recollection of the beta is different from mine probably because you have poor memory. Thats the only explanation i could come up with 
Let's just leave it at that. You're right in at least one respect, the developers are datamining and it will become readily apparent that the last day boosts were far stronger in effects than they anticipated.
Yes, SG misses. But against even/yellow stuff it mostly hits. If you are just fighting that stuff, you don't need everything to have SG on it - the damage mitigation from having 80% of the mobs with it is enough to kill the pack, especially if you attack the non-smoked mobs first. If you need to be really stealthy, then you would have to apply it until everything was smoked. Really, SG is no different than most attacks now - against even level stuff you mainly hit and always have a chance to miss.
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Finally, for those who are still new to the whole blaster thing, the fire blasters being an "AOE build" just means that they have just one AOE, fire ball. Very nice attack and I use it all the time, but that is the extent of their AOE superiority.
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All right I see bull [censored], let's set the record straight and include Fire Breath in there. You must be half asleep or not paying attention. Add Fire Sword Circle and Inferno for kicks.
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I know reading is too much for most, but don't reply if you didn't take the time. First, fire breath is a cone and as I also said, other blasters have almost identical cones, so this is not a defining "AOE" attack for a fire blaster. Second, I was obviously talking about primaries only, as there is no mention of any secondaries relating to AOE.
Let me guess... your primary blaster is a fire/fire and you felt the need to defend it despite no argument against it? These aren't your kids people, calm down. Live a little. Play some other AT mixes so you aren't so freaked out when you see a post with your AT's type in the subject. "OMG, are they talking bad about my AT mix, should I post without reading? Why not, everyone else does".
Nice post. Its really nice to see some posts that come from people who really understand how a blaster works, and what they can and cant do. In particular the single target blaster advice nearly mirrors my own experience/technique exactly.
Just a reminder to some people complaining about specific issues. This is a pure power gaming build. Some, and perhaps even many, things will change if your gaming has a different focus. This includes things like elc blasters, and eng blasters AoEs. While note as effective in a power gaming, solo/small group where your goal is to kill everything in one salvo the do in fact do just as much damage/second in longer fights since recharge and animation time are tied to damage.
From a strictly power gaming perspective how fast you can level is closely tied to short kill times which is of course where blasters excel. Having short kill times means that how fast you gain experience varies almost directly with how quickly you can find mobs to kill. (The latter of course is critical as well, but except for selecting super speed or perhaps super jump has little to do with your build.)
Its this effect that makes blasters the best for power gaming builds. other then the now nerfed burn tanks which could kill higher level mobs and do it just as fast.
If you are not a power gamer there can be, and in fact there are almost certainly will be things you may want to do differently. Dont confuse the two types of gaming. I am not a power leveler, and have a made a number of different choices to that end. But, for the times I am soloing my technique is almost identical to the single target technique outlined here, just not as fast since I dont have super speed to get from mob to mob as quickly.
This does not mean there are not a lot of things you can take away from this excellent post/thread. The information on slotting is bang on for nearly everything, except for possibly travel powers. In larger groups I find that no one even bothers with their travel powers because the teleported can move them where they need to be far more quickly then they can move themselves.
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But the second thing to consider is that blasters are simply so much better than scrappers.
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I disagree with this. Its true that blasters are the best AT for power leveling thanks to their low kill times, but for power leveling some class will always be the absolute fastest and therefore the only choice. This is inevitable and unchangeable. It just so happens that blasters are the best for this style of play.
This doesnt make them overpower or better from any other perspective, and it doesnt even translate in saying they are the best solo class since solo does not have to be synonymous with power leveling. Scrappers can and do have the ability to solo a greater variety of different types of mobs then blasters. When you are power leveling, of course this isnt relevant since you only want one type of mob, the type that provides the best xp/hour.
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It's because I want to play a scrapper but at the same time don't like to play an archetype that's gimped relative to Blasters.
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This is totally and utterly irrelevant to what this thread is about. This thread is about power leveling and that is all choosing everything, let me repeat EVERYTHING, for the fasters possible leveling. It is simply not possible to create a situation where there isnt one AT that is the absolute best for power leveling and the true power leveler will always choose that AT no matter what it is.
You simply cannot take the things in this thread out of the context of power leveling. Just because blasters happen to be the AT that power level the best does not mean they are superior or unbalanced in the normal, intended style of play.
If you want to power level as a scrapper you can in fact do so, in fact you can pretty much cut and paste the advice for single target blasters, and get nearly identical results. The only that may change is the target level of the mobs may be slightly higher. In this mode scrapper can power level better then any other AT in the game.
With this in mind, therefore, the way your statement reads to me is that you want changes made to your AT of preference so that it is the best for power leveling rather then the second best, which is frankly quite sad and something I hope the devs have no sympathy for. As has been pointed out most reasonable people will not enjoy a power leveling style of game for long, so you need to stop using it as ammunition to have your own preferred AT changed.
Power leveling is strictly a sideshow. It is not how the game is meant to be played nor is it (IMO) the most enjoyable way to play it. If there are issues with scrappers in the normal mode of play then you need to balance them against blasters in the normal mode of play, and this thread is simply not about that.
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Lightning_Fast, what defines an AOE blaster is the ability to kill a large pack of mobs in a single salvo. Fire has Fire Ball + Fire Breath, which will kill a pack in one salvo. Assault Rifle has Flamethrower and Full Auto which each can do the same. For Energy, Energy Torrent plus Explosive Blast will not kill a pack.
For Electricity, Short Circuit plus Ball Lightning will not kill a pack. For Ice, Frost Breath plus Ice Storm will not kill a pack. Thus, Fire and Assault Rifle can level using AOE quickly and effectively and the others cannot. That is why they are AOE powers and the others are single-target powers. Using Fire and Assault rifle, you will level fastest using your AOE powers on large packs of close-to even cons. For the others, you will level fastest by taking a few of the highest-conning minions you can take down efficiently.
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Untrue. With a build containing build-up as a secondary (despite losing a slot to acc), you can 2 shot equal minion groups with Ice. I would suspect energy can do the same but might have issues with knockback moving groups out of a tight bundle with no followup AOE or second cone (until late levels). Without buildup in my secondary, I can 2 shot -1 lvl groups of minions. I am still left with any lts/bosses, which also happens with my fire primary. Additionally, I could argue that the cone is instant, instead of DOT, and actually kills faster... but I would have to digress as rain then takes it's time to finish them off.
Also, you failed to mention one more tool to a solo powerleveler, in your original post. Find other like-built, but importantly... equal level, toons and group with them. Instead of grouping in the traditional fashion, just be in the same zone... working on your own groups. You will lose 1/2 xp per mob, but gain a grouping xp bonus. Provided you both do your jobs efficiently, both of you will gain xp 30-50% faster than you can solo. Add more toons in the group to increase this further... but it gets hard to find the right people and make sure they do their job (not go afk for 30 mins) when you are seperated and xp just keeps scrolling in the window. Again, they should be the same level (or +/- 1 lvl if you have to), and properly built for the same purpose.
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Just play a blaster and get over it. Seriously. I recommend this to all whiney scrappers out there. Come back to your scrapper when they "fix" everything for you.
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You reinforce my belief that you are nothing but a FOTM player. Only a FOTM player would say something as ridiculous as "if you think X is powerful then just play it"
You really just don't get it. I don't like to play a class just because it is more powerful. Rather, I want ALL classes to be balanced and equal so that my choice of playing one archetype over the other will be based purely on style rather than on power. Its a simple concept but will forever be beyond your ability to understand because you don't care what archetype you play as long as they are the most powerful.
FOTM players don't care what archetype they play, heck they can have fun playing any archetype as long as they are powerful. Not all of us are FOTM nuts that's why we care about such things as balance because we really don't want to quit this game but would rather quit it rather than be forced to play a blaster just to be competitive. Stop being an idiot and start realizing that just because someone doesn't want to play the most powerful class it means he has no right to bemoan an imbalance!
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I simply do not understand what you are trying to get at. If you are not a power leveler you can safely ignore this thread as it does not pertain to you. If you are a power leveler you will select whatever AT can be best tuned towards that end, it just so happens that AT is a blaster.
Given the dynamics of the game power leveling is linked to kill times and blasters are by design the AT that kills fastest. It seems unlikely then that you could ever change the fact that blasters are the best power leveling AT without redesigning the whole game or breaking the whole blaster AT. Either of these would simply make some other AT the power levels AT of choice and change nothing.
Since you seem to be saying you are not a power leveler my advice to you is to compare your scrapper to blasters who are similarly not power levelers. I think you will find they are much more comparable.
Put another way, what you seem to be doing is saying hey that guy is playing a blaster and made it to L40 in three weeks, while my scrapper is going to take three months. What you are missing is that that guy happens to be power leveling while you apparently are not.
He isnt making it to 40 that fast because he is playing a blaster hes making there that fast because he is power leveling, playing a blaster is just one step down that road. Blasters played the way you play your scrapper would take the same 3 months you do.
If you wanted, you could even build a power leveling scrapper. My guess would be that it would do about as well as the single target blasters and use much the same techniques. But from a true power levelers standpoint, tanking 3.5 weeks to reach 40 simply isnt as good as taking 3 weeks.
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Untrue. With a build containing build-up as a secondary (despite losing a slot to acc), you can 2 shot equal minion groups with Ice. I would suspect energy can do the same but might have issues with knockback moving groups out of a tight bundled with no followup AOE or second cone (until late levels). Without buildup in my secondary, I can 2 shot -1 lvl groups of minions. I am still left with any lts/bosses, which also happens with my fire primary. Additionally, I could argue that the cone is instant, instead of DOT, and actually kills faster... but I would have to digress as rain then takes it's time to finish them off.
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I cant talk about ice, both energy torrent and explosive blast do less damage then their fire blaster counterparts. (IIRC, both are moderate for fire, minor for energy) The fire blaster will therefore always be able to kill higher level mobs with the 2 attack combo then eng blasters can. This will result in at least 30% more HP for the fire blaster, and therefore 30% faster leveling.
Presumably the eng attacks have shorter animations and recharge times to compensate for the lower damage, but if you are power leveling you do your combo and move on so the shorter recharge is irrelevant. If you are playing in a group with longer, tougher fights, then there is a substantial chance you will get to use torrent/blast one extra time making up for the difference but this is not a power leveling mode of operation.
A few comments:
I think two things are getting confused, and the result is that the uberness of blasters is getting exaggerated. Consider that 1) people who like to powerlevel choose to play blasters because of the advantages this class has in gaining experience, and 2) powerlevelers are willing to do things to maximize their experience that the average person would find incredibly boring, or against the spirit of the game. Look at the suggestions for how to play these blaster builds, including killing swarms for hours, deliberately replaying door missions, and ignoring Lt and bosses to move to the next group.
When you add the efficent builds to the powerleveler's "maximizing xp is the ONLY priority" mindset, you get characters that develop way more quickly. This is because powerlevelers do boring things very effectively, and we create characters that do exceptionally well at the boring stuff, and the game rewards that behavior with quick xp. That's one reason why people who play the game get annoyed with us and occasionally have to yell at us and say "Don't you guys care about FUN or PLAYING the game at all?"
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I'm really beginning to wonder whether or not the people who played in beta are just plain idiots or devious or both.
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I work in the software industry. Here's what I've started to tell other people" "You really, really want to have a beta team before the software is released. Not because they will help you find bugs, although this is great. Not because they will help you improve the design, although they will. You want a beta team because a few weeks after release, other users are going to come to your public forums and say 'This is the most untested software in the history of the universe, and the people who did the QA are idiots, or blind, or both.' When that happens, you want to be able to point to the beta group, and point out that you had a few dozen, or a few hundred, or maybe even a few thousand people testing your software for weeks, and they didn't find the flaws that IN RETROSPECT seem obvious."
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I can?t talk about ice, both energy torrent and explosive blast do less damage then their fire blaster counterparts. (IIRC, both are moderate for fire, minor for energy) The fire blaster will therefore always be able to kill higher level mobs with the 2 attack combo then eng blasters can. This will result in at least 30% more HP for the fire blaster, and therefore 30% faster leveling.
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Good information. I have only played an energy blaster for a few lvls, up to 8 and am unsure about the exact statistics, especially since I did not slot specifically for AOE/cone.
Now, I do notice that energy gets energy/smash for torrent and it's labelled in Hero Planner as moderate. Actually, Explosive blast is the same. So, you "should" be doing identical dmg as ice for the cone for equally non-resistant mobs. I also noted that Torrent recycles in 8 seconds, as opposed to 16 for ice/fire cones. This means you can get 2 off in the same time. The problems with this are lack of immediate followup AOE/cone at low levels and knockback scattering them.
Of course, Hero Planner could be wrong with the numbers and my hypothesis is completely incorrect, since I don't have in-game experience with this build. I do know that other stats are off, like the end cost for the rain, which states 30, but can't be more than 12-15, based on the fact I can cast it with much less than 1/4 of the end bar left.
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... For the record though, 4 slotted for damage at level 28, pulling out all the stops I dealt capped damage (as the values were the same versus white and yellow mobs) of 301 with my Defender using Zapp. I rather suspect that a Blaster would deal considerably more. . .but maybe I'm wrong.
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Not sure what you mean by pulling out all the stops. Sounds like you buffed yourself all the way to your cap and it's 301. That sounds pretty good to me at lvl 28. Add 25% on to that and you'd have about 375 total damage for a Blaster.
I'd still rather calculate based on base damage since the caps are different for each archetype. Scrappers had a much higher cap than Blasters for example. This was recently changed too but I believe all archetypes have different caps, just like they have different damage multipliers.
hi !
If you get stealth do you really also need invisibility?
How is it different, and how much improvement does it provide.
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Not sure what you mean by pulling out all the stops. Sounds like you buffed yourself all the way to your cap and it's 301. That sounds pretty good to me at lvl 28. Add 25% on to that and you'd have about 375 total damage for a Blaster.
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I meant by using character abilities only and NOT making use of outside buffs or inspirations. If a like level Blaster would only hit for 375 color me suprised as I would expect them to be on the order of 450 or so. In fact, if a like level Blaster would only hit for 375 I'd have to seriously consider if Defenders might be treading on Blaster territory too much.
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I'd still rather calculate based on base damage since the caps are different for each archetype. Scrappers had a much higher cap than Blasters for example. This was recently changed too but I believe all archetypes have different caps, just like they have different damage multipliers.
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The problem with consideration on base damage is that if Defenders have a base of 50 and a cap of 300% that would translate into being able to belt out 150, which would seem superior to a Blaster having a base of 75 and a cap at 250% yielding a max of 187.5 even though in the end the Blaster is dealing more damage and hence kills things faster (and for less cost and setup).
Under construction
energy torrent does MINOR damage, it hits the same as power bolt NOT evergy bolt.
that's a typo in the hero planner AND in the game text.
BTW RSRobinson, despite my dispute over the abilities of ice, I agree with the rest of what you wrote... like you care...
Unless something new is contributed (instead of the off-topic sludge going on), I would like to close with this final piece of info:
AOE build primaries, from best to worse:
Assault Rifle
Fire
Ice
Energy
Electricity
While I did put Fire before Ice, simply because of the fire ball, I don't think there is a huge difference in killing speed based on Mr. Robinson's guide of decent sized blue -> yellow minion packs. I do think, based on this latest info about energy (which I still admit to having almost no experience with), there is a huge fall off of AOE ability between Ice and Energy. I know Lightning Fast, elec/elec, was never anywhere near to a multi-target blaster.
For those wondering about the differences between now and beta:
In beta, defenders did 85% damage of a blaster, had equal endurance costs, and more HP... Basically, they were super blasters.
Consider the situation now, after the recent endurance cost improvements of other classes: Defender now hits for 65% damage of a blaster, powers cost 10% more, HP identical. Now for example add AM, JUST ONE BUFF THAT WORKS ON THE WHOLE GROUP. It gives 25% damage boost, 33% endurance recovery, some unknown amount of haste, run speed, and status effect resistance.
I think there can be no question that defenders are a much bigger boon to a group.
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Unless something new is contributed (instead of the off-topic sludge going on)
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I've got a question for you. Looking at the Energy secondary, you only mention that it gets BU the earliest. But what about Power Boost? I haven't tried it yet, but given that Fire's secondary effect is more damage, wouldn't PB increase your total dmg output? The manual says it lasts "for your next couple of attacks" and since you are ideally only using two (Fire Breath and Fire Ball), it seems like the energy secondary would take the lead in total damage output.
Ziggy
AfterShock, feel free to post/link it anywhere.
As for killing swarms for 5 hours, I didn't say it was 5 straight
hours, just 5 hours total. It happened to be split about in half.
Normally I have trouble powerleveling past 1 or 2 hours at a
time, but it was the home stretch to 40, so I toughed it out.
Swarms are a mob type found in great numbers in Crey's Folly. To
all you swarm hunters, put in the overtime now. Underlings on
test (swarms are underlings) are worth very little exp now.
Misc power question answers. On the question on Stealth,
Invisibility doesn't allow you to attack while using it, Stealth
is the power you want. Smoke grenade now misses (changed in the
last patch) but that isn't really a big deal. The whole point is
to reduce the overall damage you take from a pack and even
missing a few, it still does that. Smoke grenade and Cloaking
Device are both great, and while there is some overlap, you'll
want to pick them both up.
Scrappers are not bad soloers, though it takes perhaps a near-
perfect build to get a really good AOE soloer (by far better than
single target) while, for example, any Fire blaster build is going to be
a good soloer as long as the person is at all competent. The bigger
problem comes in groups, at higher levels. Let's not even talk
about scrappers taking more damage, pretend that isn't even an
issue (and it is), let's just talk dealing damage. The
scapper has to be really on his or her toes to not be complete
deadweight. A blaster just hits TAB and unloads his AOEs. A few
blasters do this and the mobs all melt. At worse, the blaster
hand clicks a mob in the center and unloads. With fast animation
time and no need to move close, the mobs die in seconds. The
scrapper, even if he is well-built and has powerful AOEs, has to
run up to the mob he wants to fight. If he wants to unload an
AOE, he has to carefully select the mob because his AOEs are much
lower radius than a blaster's plus the scrapper has to physically
get next to the mob before he can fire. With such low radius, the
mobs moving around as he charges is much more of an issue. And, a
scrapper usually has 1 circular AOE and the others will be a very
short range cone which is nearly impossible to use to the fullest
in a group, you need to be alone and use certain time-consuming
techniques to get the mobs properly lined up to use those
effectively. Of course, when you are playing with a couple of
blaster friends, anything that takes more than a couple seconds
is 'time consuming'. Its just a matter of game mechanics working
against scrappers and for blasters.
Lightning_Fast, you say you can 2-shot equal minion groups.
Fantastic. so you use one shot for Frost Breath, and the second
shot for... Ice does not have a second AOE. Ice Storm? It will
not do enough damage, its barely passable when you get it and it
declines a whole lot over time (relative to mob hit points). I
see from your sig that you are a level 16 ice blaster. Its just
not the same in the 20s and the 30s. Ice does not have a second
AOE to follow up with. Now, the reason I mentioned Fire as a
secondary in my guide was because getting Fire Sword Circle would
give you one. I haven't tried it myself, but Frost Breath and
Fire Sword Circle could well be the basis of a decent AOE
leveler. Maybe. However, it would still be hard because you have
two powers that need proper positioning instead of one. In other
words, its easy to line up a cone and follow it up by a big
circular AOE. Its not easy to line up a cone then use an AOE that
requires you to be right in the middle of the mobs, and has a
small radius to boot. It seems much more workable with energy
since you can stealth in and Fire Sword Circle then back out and
follow up by the circular Explosive Blast.
As for Energy, if you six-slot both Energy Torrent and Explosive
Blast plus always have buildup available and have all SOs you
could probably one-shot a -1 con pack, barely. Hopefully the mobs
are not at all resistant to smashing (the most common resistance
I believe) because a good portion of both AOE's damage is
smashing. Fortunately, energy resistance is rare. If they are
smashing resistant, you won't be 2-shotting a pack of anything
worth fighting. But even if you can, to do that you have to
underslot some of your single target powers to make the
enhancement slots, plus you can't do it until 31 because only by
then will you have Explosive Blast long enough to six-slot it. In
addition, you are dealing with some mobs being knocked back and
some not, meaning it is difficult to get both AOEs to hit the
whole pack. And while you can do it say at level 32 with all +3
level SOs, gain a few levels and your damage tapers off enough
that you'll be not quite doing enough damage to kill them. Ice
and Energy just are not cut out for AOEing. If you want AOEs, go
for the power sets that specialize in them.
Don't judge everything by the hero planner. Not all 'moderate'
damage is the same. Fire Breath plus Fireball does significantly
more damage than does Energy Torrent plus Explosive Blast
regardless of similar labeling. That's just the way it will be
with so few labels available. The weakest single-target attack,
Power Bolt, does about the same damage as Energy Torrent even
though Power Bolt is listed as minor and Energy Torrent is listed
as moderate. And Explosive Blast does a little less damage than
does Energy Torrent. The labels don't really help you, you need
to go out and use the powers or get advice from people who have.
As an Electric/Fire blaster, I found this whole thread to be really informative. Yes, when I built my hero, I didnt choose the same powers simply because I wanted some variety. It may look funny, to see an electric blaster hocking fire, but its damn good fun 
I'm not a power leveler. I do like to play in groups, but this thread does give you some fantistic information and considerations for perhaps starting an alternate hero.
Kudos to everyone for the information.
I'd also like to add that your shot at electric blasters is probably correct. It is much harder for me to (at level 24) solo mobs that con orange and red then my buddy who is a technology/devices blaster. Just the smoke grenade alone kicks butt. I do find that electric blasters are very good for teaming. If I tend to get more xp with one other teamate (usually my gravity controller friend or my tech/devices blaster), we go through mobs much faster then I could on my own simply because im always having to run things down or back off to avoid damage from large groups.
I don't see this as a bad thing for the way I like to play. But it is a bad thing for power levelers.
The main objective I guess of this thread to those who take it personally is that if your idea of playing CoH is to play and team and do missions, then nothing these folks have said here really applies to you. I read it as that, and others have too.
Thanks for taking the time to build this gude, and to all the constructive posters that built and commented on it too.
Cheers, and happy hunting.
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Lightning_Fast, you say you can 2-shot equal minion groups. Fantastic. so you use one shot for Frost Breath, and the second shot for... Ice does not have a second AOE. Ice Storm? It will not do enough damage, its barely passable when you get it and it declines a whole lot over time (relative to mob hit points). I see from your sig that you are a level 16 ice blaster. Its just not the same in the 20s and the 30s. Ice does not have a second AOE to follow up with.
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Actually, I stated that I could kill -1 groups with 2 casts (totalling about 3 seconds of animation, after lining up the cone). I also said a build containing build-up could do equals, simply extracting the fact that equals have 10-20% left without... so buildup should more than make that up. I know that if someone casts EV for me, I can 2 shot equals, and buildup is more dmg. Aim might be close in comparison and would allow the removal of a rad caster to tag along in this particular instance. Meanwhile, it's easier for me to just do -1's when solo.
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Ice and Energy just are not cut out for AOEing. If you want AOEs, go for the power sets that specialize in them.
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Do you consider AR just as powerful as fire for powerleveling? If so, tell me what is the difference in killing your target groups in the 30s between AR and Ice. Please compare powers needed to complete an equal lvl group of minions.
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Don't judge everything by the hero planner. Not all 'moderate' damage is the same. *snip* And Explosive Blast does a little less damage than does Energy Torrent. The labels don't really help you, you need to go out and use the powers or get advice from people who have.
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As I said, I have played all to a reasonable level, except energy... which I clearly stated I was basically unknown to me.
On a side note:
Do you think the toons listed below are my only toons? Do you think I don't have any at a higher levels that I just don't enjoy playing anymore? Why do you assume that I have not played at the 30s-40 level and therefore all my statements are uninformed/ignorant/without-merit?
Yes, there is a perfect build for solo powerleveling. There are also builds that are close in speed and may or may not be more enjoyable for a player. I am simply trying to show those other build's strengths relative to each other. I'm not trying to dismiss other builds, but offer other powerleveling options by showing that Ice is not disadvantaged in typical scenarios, contrary to your post.
but but but .... how do you manage to solo with Fire Breath and Fire Ball??
what power do you start with ?
when i solo'd in perez park, i put catrops... then cast Fire Ball , after that i back off and cast rain of fire... and everything is dead, no need to cast another power.
now , explain to me how do you solo with fire ball and fire breath since that last power is short range and you'll get kicked in no time.
You can solo orange with just Fire Breath and Fire ball +aim and buildup. You open with Fire Breath and end the fight with Fireball a total of about 5sec and all mobs are down.
At best the mobs will get 1 round of attacks on you and most mobs will no kill you in that round. There will be no second round of attack when they are face down.
The "problem" with your view is that it´s low lvl. Fire rain is great at low lvl but at high lvl it don't have the dmg to kill anymore.
With your tactic an orange group would shoot 4-5 times before you even lay down Fire Rain. 4-5 Times from 10 orange is can be around 3000-5000dmg think you can take that?
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I simply do not understand what you are trying to get at. If you are not a power leveler you can safely ignore this thread as it does not pertain to you. If you are a power leveler you will select whatever AT can be best tuned towards that end, it just so happens that AT is a blaster.
Given the dynamics of the game power leveling is linked to kill times and blasters are by design the AT that kills fastest. It seems unlikely then that you could ever change the fact that blasters are the best power leveling AT without redesigning the whole game or breaking the whole blaster AT. Either of these would simply make some other AT the power levels AT of choice and change nothing.
Since you seem to be saying you are not a power leveler my advice to you is to compare your scrapper to blasters who are similarly not power levelers. I think you will find they are much more comparable.
Put another way, what you seem to be doing is saying hey that guy is playing a blaster and made it to L40 in three weeks, while my scrapper is going to take three months. What you are missing is that that guy happens to be power leveling while you apparently are not.
He isn’t making it to 40 that fast because he is playing a blaster he’s making there that fast because he is power leveling, playing a blaster is just one step down that road. Blasters played the way you play your scrapper would take the same 3 months you do.
If you wanted, you could even build a power leveling scrapper. My guess would be that it would do about as well as the single target blasters and use much the same techniques. But from a true power levelers standpoint, tanking 3.5 weeks to reach 40 simply isn’t as good as taking 3 weeks.
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Again this is a very very common mistaken assumption powerlevellers/FOTM players make about regular/roleplay players. When regular players demand balancing they always resort to the wierd accusatoin that we are just powerlevellers in denial. Like I said you probably will never "get it" because your mindset is so different from the rest of the gamers who aren't FOTM rollers.
I can however tell you that if you seriously think the developers will not care one way or the other that an archetype is attracting a large number of powerlevellers because it levels "so much faster" than the rest of the archetypes then you're either living in a dream world or simply naive and haven't played too many online games. If indeed what you say is true (that blasters just naturally make xp much, much faster) then you can bet that they will be nerfed.
What is the threshold for what is an acceptable discrepancy in XP rates? Of course the developers are willing to tolerate a slight discrepancy and they probably won't mind if the best blasters are levelling 5% faster than the rest. But you and I know that its far far more than that. Blasters can XP at rates 2-3x that of other archetypes, that's not an exaggeration and you know it. So again if you seriously think the devs are going to say, "Ooh, one archetype is levelling at 2-3x the rate of other archetypes. That's OK, let's keep the powerlevellers happy." you've got another thing coming!
Powerlevelling is all well and good, but if its because of some overpowering combination or an exploit or both then you're setting yourself up for a rude awakening a la burn tanker. An XP discrepancy of this magnitude will never escape the nerfbat's attention for long.
I also take offense to your insinuation that other archetypes aren't gimp relative to blasters because leveling rates are not a useful gauge for measuring archetype balance. There is nothing in this game but levels do you even realize that?? Again whats the threshold before it becomes plainly obvious that your position makes no sense? If an archetype levels at 1/100th the rate of a blaster will you finally concede that? Why? XP rate doesn't mater right?
Let's face it, something is very broken with the game mechanic currently in game. Its OK for people to want to level at the fastest rate possible but it cannot be at a pace that allows gamers to cap in the span of two weeks. That could only mean one of two possibilities: one that there are serious exploits undiscovered and two that there are extremely overpowered abilities in the game that trivialize all the rest.
Don't judge everything by the hero planner. Not all 'moderate' damage is the same. *snip* And Explosive Blast does a little less damage than does Energy Torrent. The labels don't really help you, you need to go out and use the powers or get advice from people who have.
Should probably talk to someone who HAS played an electric blaster to high levels. You electric information is misinformed.
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You can solo orange with just Fire Breath and Fire ball +aim and buildup. You open with Fire Breath and end the fight with Fireball a total of about 5sec and all mobs are down.
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Try soloing reds for a little more excitement. Whip in a fire blast/flares/fire sword quickly to clean up the leftovers. Fun stuff. Simply Devastating.
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I know reading is too much for most, but don't reply if you didn't take the time. First, fire breath is a cone and as I also said, other blasters have almost identical cones, so this is not a defining "AOE" attack for a fire blaster. Second, I was obviously talking about primaries only, as there is no mention of any secondaries relating to AOE.
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Gee, I can't read. Maybe you shouldn't have said anything about Fire not being AOE then. I don't see any other blaster with pure AOE in the primaries. Forget it, I lost all respect after I read your "no worries about melee mobs after level 10!" Did I read wrong here too? Gonna tell me to try hooked on phonics next? Too funny man. Get to level 40 and then tell me what you have learned. Too many players make assumptions on their low level heroes and then generalize that this is the way it is and the way it's gonna be.
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Let me guess... your primary blaster is a fire/fire and you felt the need to defend it despite no argument against it? These aren't your kids people, calm down. Live a little. Play some other AT mixes so you aren't so freaked out when you see a post with your AT's type in the subject. "OMG, are they talking bad about my AT mix, should I post without reading? Why not, everyone else does".
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Doc Frost - 24 ice/rad cont - V
Doc Mental - 22 emp/psy def - V
Flagro - 17 fire/energy blast - V
Lord Spike - 15 spines/regen scrap - V
Techno Ice - 16 ice/dev blast - V
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A guy with this many alts tells me to calm down and live a little. LMAO. If I see an incorrect post, I correct it. Nothing gets me like people who don't know what they are talking about and then try to preach it to others. Point made, conversation over.
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So the hit point boost was about 5-10% like I said. That really wasnt a big deal as it let you survive a single hit extra at the most by the time you hit the 20ish levels. The damage boost was also nothing special. Someone above posted it was 25% but it was more likely around 10% again. We didnt even notice it.
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Not noticing a lot of small things individually doesn't mean that they don't combine for a noticable impact. Clearly Blasters in release have not had their beta woes. If the only thing that changed between then and now is what was done at the end of beta. . . .
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The whole point of the extra damage was to balance with DEFENDERS who were considered better in a lot of ways.
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While the motivation for extra damage may have been relationally based, extra damage does have an absolute impact against things which didn't change in relation--mob hps.
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You could build a defender that did comparable damage to a Blaster and had better peripheral abilities.
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Which is why Defender damage was capped at a lower value to my understanding.
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The biggest advantage that Blasters have over Defenders (other than the unannounced endurance break) is they could put all their enhancements in attack powers while Defenders allocate to both powersets more. That and the fact that they get Build Up or Targetting Drone. So people were concerned that you could build a better Blaster using a Defender archetype. I didnt agree but try convincing Scrappers they arent gimped right now. It's like banging your head against the wall.
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I will agree that the marketplace of ideas feeds upon its own hype to a certain extent (check the history of views on Defenders on the Defender forum), but it seems to me there is a bit more at work here. I agree that a central advantage of Blasters over Defenders (and for that matter every other AT) through the low levels is the ability to focus on their attack powers. But it doesn't end there. Lowered endurance costs were predicated on the idea of a frail Blaster (you certainly don't see many discussions on other forums debating if Stamina is necessary or not--it basically goes without question). . .but Blasters are now no more frail than Controllers or Defenders. Operationally, this produces a profound difference between Defenders and Blasters. Sure a Defender has power that are supposed to make him more durable than a Blaster. . .but you have to apply those powers, which takes time and isn't free. As example, my Defender can decide to charge a group of mobs with Radiation Infection prepared to fire once in range, follow up with Lingering Radiation, and follow that with Enervating Field. Now able to stand in the midsts of the group she can Ball Lightning to her heart's content. But notice she had to apply 3 powers, 2 of which after the mobs have been angered and started to return fire. A blaster by comparison would Aim + Build Up out of range, prep an AE, and drop the entire group while the Defender is still softening the targets. And for all that Radiation Infection does to help you not get hit, you still do. . .so taking longer to kill because you deal less damage means risking status effects and overwhelming damage. (And I won't even touch upon the delirious notion the developers seem to have about Blasters not having any defenses. . .I should introduce them to my friend's Electrical/Devices Blaster.)
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If someone could do a study now and see what a how lvl 20 heros hit for damage it would be interesting.
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It would be interesting. For the record though, 4 slotted for damage at level 28, pulling out all the stops I dealt capped damage (as the values were the same versus white and yellow mobs) of 301 with my Defender using Zapp. I rather suspect that a Blaster would deal considerably more. . .but maybe I'm wrong.
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