What is your favorite SOLOING blaster and why???

I had to piggy-back off another posting because the information I received from the other post was extremely useful, I would like an equal source of information more tailored to my needs.

Energy/electric - even more KB than energy/energy. They can't hit you when they are flat on their backs.

OR

Fire/ice - fire for the massive damage, ice as some control so they can't reach you to hit you.

Sonic is another good soloing primary with the -res.

I love my Ice/Elec/Elec blaster, Holds and blasts and blaps, and blaps and holds and blasts, he's a beauty to behold in combat. Unfortunately there's no one to see him, cuz he's solo...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Sure, the devs are supposed to listen to their customers, mister business 101 out there. And if I decide to start suggesting that the devs change the game from being about superheroes and supervillains to being about clowns that is my right as well, and technically Paragon Studios is supposed to pay attention to me. But I hope strongly that they assume a meth-head somehow managed to hack into my forum account and make paper airplanes out of my posts, because I hope they recognize stupid when they see it. I assume they will recognize futile just as accurately.

Ice/EM. It is by far the fastest soloing character I have made.

Ice/Ice, baby.

Psi/Psi

Slot them right, and the attack strings are positively devastating.
I have had players mistake them as repeating booms.
Yes...
Slot them right, string them together, and you DO, in fact, have one incredibly powerful blaster.

Well...,

- Once again, I vote for EB/EM Blasters...the utility alone from EM is astounding - conserve energy, boost range (which literally makes all attacks snipes, except for cones aoes) and power boost which makes EVERYTHING more useful - it's got it all. The melee attacks are wicked as well...(quoting Forest Gump) 'They're my favorite'.

I'll second the Energy/Elec for the Knockback. Add in Bonfire from the fire epic and its heaven.

Second would be a AR/Energy. Doesn't sound to good but I have a ball with it. Sniper builds ftw! (boost range and Centi's slotted in all attacks)

I have 2 blasters that are both excellent at soloing, my original is Sonic/Elec/Elec. And my current favorite is Fire/Ice/Fire*

Siren Song is excellent for a solo blaster, and since sonic/ is heavy on the single target attacks it is easy to sleep the group and take out your targets one at a time. /Elec gives excellent melee attacks and a little control. along with the Elec Mastery pool you have good armor and more control. Great for solo play.

My Fire/Ice/Fire feels like an unstoppable engine of destruction. The /Ice adds just enough mitigation to let the Fire attacks melt anything in my way.

* I use the dual builds for my Fire blaster to make a more team oriented blaster for high lvl TFs and such, in his alternate form he is Fire/Ice/Elec. Fireball, Firebreath, Static Discharge, Rain of Fire, Shiver all make him extremely deadly to large groups, but I need my team to back me up due to all the aggro will draw if I go crazy with the attacks.

Sonic/Energy Melee is my favorite. It has great controls for solo. He can sleep most a crowd with Siren Song. He can stack stuns with power boost and Stun and I think its Shriek. Plus the single target damage output is awesome with the Sonic - resistance and the high damage single damage melee attacks in Energy Melee.

Sonic/Devices.

Seriously.

Siren's Song neuters most mobs before they even shoot. Screech or Taser (or both for a boss) will get you one target that won't shoot back while the rest continue to snooze away. The resistance debuff will increase your damage significantly (It is possible to deal damage ABOVE the damage cap with a Sonic)

Cloaking Device + Stealth IO = invisibility without dipping into any other pools. Webnade keeps things at range, which is where you want them.

I have gone fairly long periods of time without even taking damage on this character, let alone dying. Softcap your ranged defense and hover a lot and you will be nearly unkillable by the majority of things in the game.

Fire/Devices/Munitions, This is definitely my favorite. I have 53% ranged defense and about 28% AoE, it is rare that he gets hit on a solo mish, just as long as I keep them at range, caltrops, webnade, and Freeze Ray do a good job of that. Gun Drone provides good extra damage, Trip Mine makes for a good opening mini nuke. Overall I am extremely happy with the build, solo he doesn't get touched haven't tested him on an EB yet but I think just as long as I keep him Immob it would not be a problem.

I solo with my Ice/Ice all the time, but I leveled mostly in a group (way back in 04).

However, I would like to give honorable mention to my Elec/Nrg who has leveled almost exclusively solo. This character has taken out Frostfire, Atta, Heracles and Ming the Merciless (or whatever that Council guy's name is) all solo and all in melee (I had Lightning Bolt 1-slotted through all of that).

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I had to piggy-back off another posting because the information I received from the other post was extremely useful, I would like an equal source of information more tailored to my needs.

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Ice/ice/cold, because nothing can hit you when its frozen solid and dead.

QR

Depends

Pre IO sets Ice/(ment,ice,energy) all very good.

Nothing quite like a freeze ray then drain psyche off the held mob.

Post IO

Fire/Ment
Arch/Ment.

Either way they are dead. Who needs to hold them anymore ?

for soloing i don't think anything beats a well slotted ice/elec blaster. Superior high damage. Yes factoring the animation time of total focus /elec IS more damage than /energy.

You have slows, and holds galore which makes soloing a breeze, if you even need the holds half the time. Bonus thing with BFR and SG, they get slotted as an attack and the hold is a bonus.

IOd it wont matter, but even before IOs power sink is unlimited energy.

Now an Ice/elec/elec. Add a 4th hold in the epic, and having charged armor and power surge at your disposal is amazing.

And who solos ALL the time, the combo also gets static discharge for some additional aoe on teams .

I'll pipe in with En/Dev:

- the joys of KB (in area and at range, not to mention toe bombing) mentioned before as great mitigation for solo play (though in the rare times I played in teams, it wasn't hard to make my KB help instead of hinder)

- plus the joys of the much maligned devices, also mentioned before (caltrops!!!, CD invisibility as someone said before, I like my TD and GD too... and trip mines can be so much fun - if usually slower than just letting loose).

The 3 blasters I have are all VERY solo friendly.

My Sonic/NRG is awsome. A cone Sleep, stuns out the wazo, and extream single target damage. In all honesty, he plays much much better solo then in teams IMO cause, he's got bunk for AoE and AoE is where it's at for teams IMO.

My Ice/Ice/Cold is also a great soloer for much the same reasons. Awsome single target dmg, massive slows, Ice Patch, 3 holds. Better teamer IMO then my Sonic/NRG. Very all around blaster build IMO.

My Fire/Ice/Elec is my personal FAV blaster. Fire give awsome damage. Ice provides tools for staying alive, and Elec adds an extra AoE cone, Hold, and Panic button to the mix. She solos nicely. And shines in teams. I can hardly think of a better combo. (IMO of course.)

Fastest is Archery, but there is zero damage mitigation from the Primary. If you went Archery/EM you would need Weave and build on Ranged defense with boosting from Power Boost.

Sonic/Psi is a good damage mix with a good soloing trick. Sleep a large group with Sirens Song, then Drain Psyche them for a massive regen buff and turn on World of Confusion.

Another favorite of mine is AR/NRG which gets the most from Boost Range (3 Cone attacks) and adding Build-Up to AR gets good damage. Has enough knockback to keep most attackers on their backs.

Soloing effectively with a Blaster requires some way of quickly AoE-ing groups of mobs. Any Blaster can solo single targets, but leveling will be tedious if that's all your Blaster can do so Ice, Energy, Sonic, need the get their extra AoE's from the secondary. Assuming you mean solo-PvE.

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QR

Depends

Pre IO sets Ice/(ment,ice,energy) all very good.

Nothing quite like a freeze ray then drain psyche off the held mob.

Post IO

Fire/Ment
Arch/Ment.

Either way they are dead. Who needs to hold them anymore ?

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Those are great for teaming but fire or mental have very little damage mitigation for hard targets like elite bosses. Ice/Ice or Elec can hold an Elite boss and if all else fails slow him to a point where he can't even catch you.

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Soloing effectively with a Blaster requires some way of quickly AoE-ing groups of mobs. Any Blaster can solo single targets, but leveling will be tedious if that's all your Blaster can do so Ice, Energy, Sonic, need the get their extra AoE's from the secondary. Assuming you mean solo-PvE.

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If you want to run around hazard zones, yeah, AoEs are essential, but if you just want to solo mission content (both "official" arcs and AE arcs) then your single target damage becomes way more important than your AoEs.

I've levelled numerous Blasters, and I find doing missions way less tedious than soloing big groups in hazard zones.

For a primary, Ice, Fire, and Sonic are all good (if you can stomach Sonic's animations/sound effects, which I really can't).

Energy Blast I rate a tier below. It lacks the controls of Ice and Sonic and it doesn't have the pure damage output of Fire.

Archery, Assault Rifle, and Psi are pretty good, but they all suffer from having a highly resisted damage type. Assault Rifle also lacks a heavy-hitting single target attack, which I always find annoying.

Electric has a little bit of everything (control, single target, and AoE) but doesn't really excel in any area--the pure Energy damage it puts out is a plus, though, since relatively few enemies resist it.

As far as secondaries go, I like Ice more and more. What you lose in melee damage you more than make up in control.

Energy and Electric are also excellent choices, with their hard hitting melee attacks. I think that I prefer Electric slightly since they nerfed Total Focus--it's nice to have a real immobilize instead of Power Thrust.

Devices is very different, and it's powerful in some ways, but I find that, overall, its a bit weak.

Fire just seems to give you a bunch of powers that you really don't need. Maybe if you had a single-target focussed primary which already had good control (like, say, Ice), then Fire would add some AoE.

Mental I have very little experience with. Like the Psi primary, though, you have the issue of a heavily resisted damage type.

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If you want to run around hazard zones, yeah, AoEs are essential, but if you just want to solo mission content (both "official" arcs and AE arcs) then your single target damage becomes way more important than your AoEs.

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This

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Sonic/Psi is a good damage mix with a good soloing trick. Sleep a large group with Sirens Song, then Drain Psyche them for a massive regen buff and turn on World of Confusion.

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Yeah i love my sonic/MENTAL blaster too. But more for teams as he has a full aoe attack chain. For soloing outside of the ice/elec hard to top a sonic/elec or sonic/em as well.

For soloing energy doesnt need any extra aoes.

Ice and sonic, well, we're soloing so you don't really need aoes in 98% of soloing situations really. But now were getting into logistics here, as to what you're soloing. Misisons, you really don't need aoes at all. A heavy ST blaster with lots of attacks so there is no gap and some controls will work best.

On the other hand, i could argue that elec could be the best soloer given, /em or /elec as when slotted can take on full mobs once it gets the end drain working right mixed with aoe damage.

But generally, ice/elec, sonic/elec, sonic/em etc are what you're looking at.

I'm really liking my energy/energy for soloing. The knockback on your blasts and power thrust is really good damage mitigation, and with /energy you can have build up and aim by lvl 12. With both of those stacked I can 2 shot a +1 LT with power burst/blast, and that's with DOs.

The only real downside is the KB associated with your blasts isn't guaranteed. Power blast won't always knock back the opponent. Power thrust kind of helps make up for that, but since it's a melee attack and my blaster is designed more for at range that really only gets utilized if a mob runs up to me (which happens quite often actually), or when my other attacks are recharging I'll run up and just pimp slap a dude with it.

I also like utilizing my KB in "higher ground" situations when I'm on like a balcony or a ledge or something. You can knock an LT or boss off onto the ground, and they'll take quite a while to get back to you sometimes allowing you to take out the rest of the spawn before they get back.

Overall I'm finding my energy blaster to be very effective both solo and on teams.

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Ice/ice/cold, because nothing can hit you when its frozen solid and dead.

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