Blaster Guides and FAQs

Wow! Awesome tips! I love these boards.

It's a Click every 15 seconds and winds up costing you 7% of your available time in exchange for minimally 20% additional damage on you ST chain.

The important thing to remember is that all these clicks can be clicked before entering actual combat.

BR->PB->Aim->BU->AOEs->(Single Target Chain+PB)^N

Even in long combats the loss from power boost is more than made up by having permanent fast snipes and build up.

Yes.... I don't think anyone is contesting that.

Spending 9% of your time Power Boosting and dealing no damage is, nevertheless, a significant bite out of the 20% benefit from fast snipes.

You see I view the net 11% bonus from fast snipes as a free side effect from power boosting my defense.


Edit to be clear: If you don't feel the need to boost your def with power boost, you can rotate aim, build up and powerboost so you only use it once every 30 seconds

Sorry but you have missed it. They aren't exclusive. Powerboost bridges the gaps that aim and build up leave you with. So when you say 9% it isn't always 9%, it can be as little as 2% and that is at your discrection.

Personally I do power boost continuously on my AR/Energy blaster and my Fire Energy blaster. It's really something of a no brainer to me to trade the dead time for a 50% to 100% increase my mitigation from defense.

Yes, Hopeling's spot-on. So's Fan, at least with respect to his view on Power Boost's attendant benefits. The only thing I can add is that 9% is the amount of dead time just from Power Boost in this scenario.

In other words, if you're also using Aim, Build Up, and Boost Range, you're going to have more dead time, which means that the dead time from Power Boost will account for a larger proportion of your available attack time. If we stipulate that a non-EM Blaster spends let's say 9% of his time on Aim and Build Up, then his practical attack uptime will be ~91% of what you'd expect to find on paper.

If we stipulate that a comparable EM Blaster build spends the same 9% on Aim and Build Up, and let's say 4% on Boost Range, and 9% on Power Boost, then his attack uptime will be 78% of what you might expect to find on paper, or 78 / 91 = 85.7% of the non-EM Blaster's.

And if we stipulate that the EM Blaster's on-paper DPS (that is, his DPS before we account for activation time) is 20% higher than the non-EM Blaster's, the comparison works out to 1.2 * 0.857 = 1.028, or a net advantage of 2.8% DPS for the EM Blaster.

Now obviously, these numbers are heavily fudged. The actual numbers will vary quite a bit depending on your build choices and IO investment. What's clear is that EM loses a larger proportion of its DPS as recharge bonuses rise. On the other hand, EM also gains significant attendant benefits in the form of +DEF and in terms of endurance saved through its new Energize clone (the more endurance you use -- the faster you attack -- the more the endurance discount helps you, whereas recovery offers a static benefit).

It's not like EM is a loser here; I'm just saying that the much-touted perma-fast-snipe advantage may be close to a wash once you get down to brass tacks.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Yes, when you include Aim and Build Up, you need to spend less time activating Power Boost. But if you're including Aim and Build Up, /nrg's advantage is proportionally smaller, as well.

If you're cycling Aim/Build Up and also keeping Power Boost up all the time for the defense bonus, you're still spending ~9% of your time activating Power Boost, but gaining substantially less than 20% fast-snipe damage compared to a different secondary. That's the worst-case scenario, not the best: these effects combined could easily leave /nrg with no damage advantage at all! You do get some extra defense from Power Boost, but /nrg is not the only secondary with defensive benefits, either.

This doesn't mean /nrg will be bad; it's already great and will be getting better. But it's also not clearly nor dramatically ahead of other secondaries, because ~half the advantage of Power Boost is eaten by Power Boost itself, and other secondaries have perks of their own.

Ah. Understood then. AF constructed his reply in a way that I thought he meant to use all of that at once, which seemed detrimental.

If you are cycling power boost to maintain defense now you will gain the 20 plus percent damage increase from the snipe change and perhaps more.

I can see I am not communicating this effectively so lets lay it out.

For the sake of argument lets look at an attack sequence with the I24 changes in mind.


Assuming an X8 sized spawn bosses on.

For any secondary with build up.

Aim->Build up->Crashless nuke->Other AoE attack

At this point you have removed the minions most if not all of the lieutenants and left the bosses very badly hurt. Next you shift to your single target chain to kill the pesky stuff that is still alive. You can get off 1 super snipe chain and then you are out of gas. You no longer have the plus to hit to keep things going. Its roughly another 15 seconds before you get your fast snipe back.

That is a giant gap where you don't get your bonus.

The alternative with Energy is you hit powerboost before the start and again after it is out of cool down. In the case of nukes with secondary effects that power boost will boost stuns, end drain, -recovery you are even further ahead of the other sets.

Energy simply better leverages the snipe changes than any other set besides devices, but the snipe changes aren't enough to bring devices up to energy's i23 level let alone take it past it. In either case at the high end high recharge level conserve power better enables you to run the snipe chains than the passive recovery powers.

There is also the matter of being able to fuel the attack chains. If you scroll up I have a sample showing what conserve power does for AR. In the case of leading off with a nuke that will cost 27 end, you pull even further ahead. It's going to be very hard for any secondary besides energy to actually run a snipe chain for an extended length of time without resorting to inspirations, with the possible exception of electric, which has its own issues.

I use powerboost continuously to increase my defense. That was just the best place to put it so it doesn't cut into the damage increase from aim and build up.

Are we talking about Energy vs Devices specifically now? I thought it was Energy vs any other secondary.

With the recovery tools that other secondaries already have or will have, I'm not particularly worried about any Blaster's ability to run a snipe attack chain.

Again, I'm not saying Energy doesn't have advantages. It's awesome now, and will be awesomer in i24. It's already probably my favorite Blaster secondary. But on the other hand, it has no AoE at all, and no debuffs, and a significant portion of its apparent advantage due to fast snipes is lost to Power Boost's activation time (and you have to spend 1-2 extra power picks for Tactics, and the advantage disappears completely with yellow inspirations or buffing teammates). It is and still will be a good secondary; it isn't and still won't be "Energy Manipulation or You're Doing It Wrong".

No, it's 42. Don't you people know anything about Life, the Universe, and Everything?

Blasters, they shoot things.
13.
It is undeniable. Those of you trying for 36, or even more overblown at 42 are reaching too much.
13. Enjoy the simplicity and truth. I hear there is freedom in it.

It dawned on me later that this was slightly incorrect when I posted this. I'd forgotten that /Elec and /Fire already had end management powers in the form of Power Sink and Consume respectively. Still...most of what I said holds true...with pretty much these 2 exceptions.

Originally Posted by Smiling_Joe ::looks at RaikenX's signature:: Something funny.

Sometimes I think you guys should give me an award or something.



Quiet peasant.


Wow, you guys. I'll take this from the super secret guide I've been working on. The phrase "Blasters shoot things" has 19 letters in it. Now, if you add in "they" as from the original quote, we have 23 letters. The next logical step is to factor in a 22% tohit bonus. 22% is a lot like the number 22, so lets add that to 23 for a total of 45. Now, I see that you guys only subtracted 3 numbers for "THB" which resulted in your getting 42. That's a pretty common mistake in this type of equation. You should have actually subtracted 12 for "TwoHeadedBoy" to arrive at 33. So wait, how did I get 36, you ask? Well, I clicked Aim before I did the calcs, which means I added 3 (Aim has three letters, try to keep up) to arrive at the undisputed correct answer of 36.

Well with mental which has the problem of being sub par unless you tag 5 enemies with it,that is 3 out of 7 secondaries. It's pretty safe to say that the changes to devices aren't boosting it to top of the heap by any stretch of the imagination. Bringing us to 4 out of 7 secondaries, leaving /Energy competing with /Dark and /Ice


Do you have a redname saying toggles do not suppress when mezzed ? Because if the toggles do, that knocks out /Ice. All that is left is /Dark for /Energy Manipulation and it's pretty clear that /Energy Manipulation gets more from the changes than /Dark does if for no other reason than /energy magnifies the effects of the new non crashing nukes.

But really this should not be the case. The blaster secondaries needed more than just trying to slap a quick and dirty fix on them, and the poor way the snipe bonus is distributed doesn't help

How do we still have people discussing the blaster adds that *still* haven't read the details outlined a billion times over?

Frigid Embrace, Cauterizing Aura and Field Operative (all the toggle Blaster sustain powers) do *not* detoggle and the sustain effects do *NOT* suppress.

To completely clarify, if a /fire blaster is mezzed, Cauterizing Aura will stop doing damage but continue to give yourself a heal over time. This was mentioned, outlined and repeated after the first coffee talk that introduced these changes.

There was also mention of changes being targeted at /dev outside of Cloaking Device > Field Operative change. For one, there was mention of Time Bomb becoming a toggle. I don't believe there was much else said about that secondary, but it and others were mentioned as have other tweeks made to it such as improving the radius of Frozen Aura. There was a sideways comment about a Martial Arts Manipulation secondary but they seemed to want to cover up any details to any new secondaries.

I'd hold my judgement on 'who's at the top of who' until the actual beta releases. But even then, trying to pin anything down is pretty pointless since you're only doing so with the small amount of info we have and what is what can easily be circumstantial to the build.

For instance, you herald /Energy, which I can agree with, as one of the top secndaries...but /fire does have some quirks to it that may be more enticing such as immobilize and sleep protection thanks to Burn and the HoT of Cauterizing Aura. The stacking sleeps may not be useful to all unless built to take advantage of for /Ice. Frankly, I'd put up /Dark above /Energy if only because Touch of the Beyond is a really good power, it buffs you and debuffs the foe's ToHit from 80ft away? That's a bit more certain than stacking power boosted controls IMO.

The only one people rarely mention is /elec which will still have amazing endurance management (I think they get +recovery in Might of Thunder as well as in Power Sink), the same regen buff and the ability to drain foes pretty handily if given opportunity.

I'm in 'wait and see' mode, if only because I think what is *more* interesting at this point isn't which secondary is the best, but what would a *new* secondary built from the ground up with sustain in mind would look like.

A billion times ? Really ? Sorry I refuse to watch the video chats. They are a fantastic way to take an hour, conveying 5 minutes of written information.


Sorry but now is exactly the time to talk about this. By the time these things are coded into a build they tend to get stuck there. This is the first time blasters have gotten serious attention since 2008. This time it would be very good if the fix actually was a fix.

[/quote]
For instance, you herald /Energy, which I can agree with, as one of the top secndaries...but /fire does have some quirks to it that may be more enticing such as immobilize and sleep protection thanks to Burn and the HoT of Cauterizing Aura. [/quote]

Prior to going rogue I would have certainly given you the immobilize, even though a hold was available from several epics. Now, not so much. There are much better immobilizes available to all blasters through the patron powers.

You are trying to stack sleeps with frozen aura ? Or are you assuming an Sonic / Ice manipulation pairing ? Unless you are leading off with siren song in the middle of the spawn that hardly seems the best way to go even for that combination.

Regarding /Dark -To hit is very nice but there is only two primaries to stack it with and even there -To hit from the primary actually works better with /energy than with /Dark. Forgetting Power Boosted Blackstar or a Power Boosted Blizzard, dark blast/ energy manipulation lets you stack more -to hit faster than dark / dark.

There is an entire separate thread about the problems with using electric powers to sap. Just to encapsulate, to have sapping be as effective as a hold or a stun, you need to completely drain end and stop recovery on the target. /Electric can do this in two attacks to a single target, which is functionally equivalent to stacking two stuns from energy or powerboosted control powers from the primary.

Its more important to me to have the changes done well this time. I am not looking forward to some UBER pay to win secondary in the future.

As things stand these changes taken as an aggregate benefit defenders and corruptors far more than they do blasters. It's very hard to decide if the snipe benefit or the non crashing nuke benefit is the better but the combination of both of those for buffing/debuffing ATs certainly seems to outweigh the benefit of the combined changes for blasters. If nothing else they will be able to keep their debuff toggles going through nukes. Nothing like seeing a spawn that is radiation infected and under the influence of enervating field get hit with a blizzard.

I see your reasoning, but then you add in Life, The Universe, and Everything (standard in all such calculations). 28 letters. That brings us up to 64. Then you subtract Mad Grim (7) and Kirsten (7). This brings us down to 50. Then you multiply it by 84% (the percentage of relevant posts in this topic) and you arrive at the correct answer of 42.

I said 'outlined a billion times' which is referring to the *threads* in the *forums* by *posters* who have *outlined* the changes which refer to the questions you're asking. Do the toggles suppress? That was asked several times during the coffee talk, several times in the thread outlining the details of the chat, rewritten several times by people relaying that information and more times when a new thread comes up talking about who's better than who.




Why? So you can complain that /Ice doesn't do as much damage as /Energy? So? The changes weren't made to balance each other out, they were made to balance the AT out. If, for whatever reason, it turns out that /Energy is ridiculously overpowered by these changes, then something should be done about it. But you can hardly say if any of the sets are thrown out of balance by the cnages if you haven't tested it.

Your fixation on needing to change things before its too late is only viable if you think changes should be made for balance concerns. I think that's a perfectly fine discussion if you can back it up with numbers, but wanting to rush into the debate 'before it's too late' sounds kinda dumb...I guess if you just don't like the sustain mechanics being introduced then yeah, debate on what those changes do to the AT. But is that what you're discussing?
I said 'immobilize/sleep *protection*'. Sure you can get immo protection from a pool, but you can also get it in an attack for /fire. And if Cauterizing Aura does in fact heal you over time with tics of healing, those tics will break a sleep effect because sleeps break on any HP change.


You can lead off with Sirens Song, and the mobs that aren't affected by the sleep will keep running at you, to which Frozen Aura will finish the job. It won't, however, work if the rank of the mob is too high and your first Siren's Song missed them.

[EDIT]Also, Sleep Grenade and Flash Freeze also cause AoE sleep to which one can stack with Frozen Aura if they so desire.[/EDIT]

I'm not bagging on Power Boost, but it's not going to replace actually having the powers that are boosted by it. You can partially replace Power Boost by actually *having* Blackstar and *slotting* it for -ToHit. I may not get 80% slotting out of it, but then I don't need another click to get that effect...and beyond that, how many players are actually going to slot for -ToHit on Blackstar if they already have Power Boost? I know I surely won't on my Dark/EM blaster.

But beyond that, sure /Dark has -ToHit to stack...it's called Penumbral Grasp, Smite, Shadow Maul, Midnight Grasp and Touch of Fear itself. There's also Soul Mastery.

And from experience, Power Boosted dark blast is great!...but the debuffs only last 10 seconds. ToF is 2x stronger -ToHit, lasts 2x longer and fears the foe. You're not going to outright replace that with Power Boost by itself.



Not really debating the qualities of endurance drain. But I'm not going to ignore it either or its effects on survival.



But you don't know what 'right' is.

There's your problem.

Not to put to fine a point on this

But the short outline talks about none of the information you are talking about.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=291671


Yes because the devs have been exceptionally responsive in addressing problems with the blaster AT. [ /sarcasm]

We have some of the numbers and can certainly talk about what they mean.

Why do you have such a problem with this ?

If Cauterizing aura does provide sleep protection how valuable it is, is an interesting question. But, it isn't going to be answered by trying to shut down discussions.


Yes I understand how sleeps work. Do you have any idea how other controls work ?


You have completely missed what was said and failed to understand the mechanics.

The only way you can stack /Dark's -to hit with -to hit is with other powers that have -to hit. Seeing as you wanted to include blackstar in this, It does more -to hit for longer than the everything /dark manipulation has can muster. It isn't even a close comparison before power boost is tossed in.


You are comparing a single target melee range attack to attacks that can drop an entire spawns -to hit, and do so as a bonus effect in addition to doing damage to them ?

Glad to see you aren't using any false equivalences. [/ sarcasm]