"Best" AoE Blaster that ISN'T Fire or Dark?


Ad Astra

 

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I know you guys must get similar questions to this ALL THE TIME, but I didn't see anything in my cursory search of the forum and guides.

Title pretty much says it all. I want to do some AoE destruction, but I'm sick to death of fire and dark skills. I made myself a AR/Mental blaster just because I counted all the AoE's and that looked like the best combo from a purely "count the AoE's" perspective. He's decently fun to play but the redraw on the gun makes me kinda sad. Still is this the best choice besides fire/ ?

About KB...I've read that people don't like the KB and I know there's a lot of it in AR...but I've found that if I wait for the troller to pop Fire Cages, the KB seems to turn into a KU. Is that true or am I still just p.o.ing people?

Thanks!


 

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archery
assault rifle
anything with a /MM


 

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AR is probably next best to Fire. Or Archery, but not until level 32 with Rain of Arrows.

Pair any primary except Psychic with /Mental or /Fire, and you'll have above average AoE. /Fire's will be all PBAoE, /Mental's will be partly ranged. (With the Ice primary, you'll need to take Ice Storm, the rain.)

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About KB...I've read that people don't like the KB and I know there's a lot of it in AR...but I've found that if I wait for the troller to pop Fire Cages, the KB seems to turn into a KU. Is that true or am I still just p.o.ing people?

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Fire Cages suppresses KB for .... I think 15 seconds after casting. Most of the other AoE immobs do it as well.

Edit: Looked it up. KB resistance for 12 seconds. So it's not your imagination.


 

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AR/Dev with MM.... I always have an AOE attack up and ready to go... as for KB... if you are fighting 52 or 54 bosses kb is not that bad and if you have some people tossin down holds kb is a non issue...

if you alternate the kb attacks with the non kb's and do not slot for kb... the tank will taunt back any kb mobs fast enough... plus unless you are grouping with lower levels... the mobs really do not live long enough for kb to be an issue...


 

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Arch/MM


The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.

 

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Cool well it sounds like the AR/MM was a good choice then. Thanks for all the feedback and the info about knockbacks! I'm so slotting my AOE's for recharge now. >


 

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AR/Em = Camspin Snipe


 

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The "Standard AOE" primaries are archery, AR and fire for blasters. (We don't get Dark. Yet?)

I built a PBAOE Mess (Elec/Fire) but it only made it to about level 13. I think some of the key elements are just too damn slow and you'd have to be suicidal or know a force fielder really well. Or both.

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Well, I have been dual-boxing lately. FF/ or Sonic/ or Emp/ on follow and spamming whatever is most useful. Suppose with a pocket defender, I could do some interesting things...


 

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arch/mm, arch/fire


 

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I built a PBAOE Mess (Elec/Fire) but it only made it to about level 13. I think some of the key elements are just too damn slow and you'd have to be suicidal or know a force fielder really well. Or both.

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I don't know why, but this idea has really taken root. I think it was because I was playing my fire/kin yesterday and just standing in the middle of a mess of guys and PBAOE'ing everyone. Doing in with a blaster for even more damage sound highly amusing. Maybe I'll whip one of these up and have my sonic/sonic follow him with bubbles...


 

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... I don't know if 50% mitigation is going to be enough. If you do this, watch out for Combustion: it is a trap that will kill you.

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I'll make a FF/ defender and I'll get him the rez from the health pool. Going down in a blaze of glory every group of mobs sounds highly amusing, especially with a pocket rezzer and a tank to pick up the aggro when I go down.

lol This whole concept amuses me. Maybe I'll slot him for +melee defense while I'm at it.


 

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Update: My elec/fire PBAoE blaster is L22ish right now. He's SUPER FUN! It helps to have 2 tanks and a controller or two on the team so I don't catch aggro and the mobs all stay tightly packed. Once I catch aggro, it's over, which is always amusing...except when it happens right after I hit hasten. :P

But yeah, this blaster is great fun to play. More so than trying to line up cones all the time. Thx for the tip, Fulmens.


 

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I have a 50 sonic/MM/elec blaster. Her battle cry is "Taste my cones of Justice!"... I have 5 cone attacks and 1 PBAoE. Those are my only attacks I use generally unless I am held/slept/etc...

With hover, if possible on the map, I am above the groups shooting down. There is no need to line up cones with this method. I just rain down death and destruction from above like the waffler that I am.


Wassabi Grav/Kin 50 (before badges/accolades were in game) Pinnacle
Miss Command Bots/Traps 50 Justice

*others left off due to space issues

 

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He's decently fun to play but the redraw on the gun makes me kinda sad.

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Unless I am mistaken the activiation time is the same regardless of having to redraw your weapon. I thought that the "it takes longer because you have to redraw your weapon" was a myth.


 

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He's decently fun to play but the redraw on the gun makes me kinda sad.

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Unless I am mistaken the activiation time is the same regardless of having to redraw your weapon. I thought that the "it takes longer because you have to redraw your weapon" was a myth.

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The skill begins recharging as soon as you trigger it. The attack doesn't FIRE until the gun draws. You don't lose DPS in the long term, but your target might be dead before you actually get the shot off.


 

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He's decently fun to play but the redraw on the gun makes me kinda sad.

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Unless I am mistaken the activiation time is the same regardless of having to redraw your weapon. I thought that the "it takes longer because you have to redraw your weapon" was a myth.

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The skill begins recharging as soon as you trigger it. The attack doesn't FIRE until the gun draws. You don't lose DPS in the long term, but your target might be dead before you actually get the shot off.

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While you're partially right (recharge doesn't begin until animation is finished), you're wrong as to what you were quoting.

It used to be that redraw was an incorporated increase in the animation time of the power. Whether you were making the attack with your weapon out (no need to redraw) or without it out (need to redraw), it took the same amount of time to activate. This was accomplished by speeding up the animation of the attack if redraw was needed and leaving it alone if it wasn't.

A few issues back, at mass player request, BAB made it so that redraw was no longer an incorporated factor but sped up all weapon animations to their "non-redraw" speed if you excluded the portion of the animation consumed by redraw. This improved the DPS of weapon sets by a fair margin by making all of their attacks animate faster. However, for those that used redraw intensive attack strings, it didn't negatively affect them in any way, outside of making the competing attack strings better.

The simple explanation:
Old w/o Drawn = Old w/ Drawn
New w/o Drawn = Old w/o Drawn = Old w/o Drawn
New w/ Drawn = (Old w/o Drawn - Redraw) = (Old w/ Drawn - Redraw) = (New w/o Drawn - Redraw)


 

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stuff

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Maybe it's just early, but...huh??? That didn't make much sense to me.

Let me put it another way. I don't know anything about old since I'm a noob, and I don't particularly care about how it USED to be. All I know is if my gun isn't drawn and I try to shoot it, it takes longer for the orange numbers to pop up than if it's already drawn. I'm not concerned about dps, I'm concerned about targets getting moved down and my shots (and cooldown, no matter how long) being wasted.

Anyhow, with my PBAoE guy, I have ridiculous animation times before most skills go off anyhow so it's not like it's any better. At least it's consistently slow tho.


 

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Maybe it's just early, but...huh??? That didn't make much sense to me.

Let me put it another way. I don't know anything about old since I'm a noob, and I don't particularly care about how it USED to be. All I know is if my gun isn't drawn and I try to shoot it, it takes longer for the orange numbers to pop up than if it's already drawn. I'm not concerned about dps, I'm concerned about targets getting moved down and my shots (and cooldown, no matter how long) being wasted.

Anyhow, with my PBAoE guy, I have ridiculous animation times before most skills go off anyhow so it's not like it's any better. At least it's consistently slow tho.

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I agree that it seems that redraw makes it seem like that damage takes longer to 'send'...But what Umbral is saying is that redraw don't matter...At least it's not supposed to.

Supposedly others have tested and confirmed. Thats generally good enough for me. Maybe someday I'll get around to proving it to myself that redraw doesn't matter. My biggest problem these days is lag on teams...With that problem, it's trival for me to complain about redraw.


 

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stuff

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Maybe it's just early, but...huh??? That didn't make much sense to me.

Let me put it another way. I don't know anything about old since I'm a noob, and I don't particularly care about how it USED to be. All I know is if my gun isn't drawn and I try to shoot it, it takes longer for the orange numbers to pop up than if it's already drawn. I'm not concerned about dps, I'm concerned about targets getting moved down and my shots (and cooldown, no matter how long) being wasted.

Anyhow, with my PBAoE guy, I have ridiculous animation times before most skills go off anyhow so it's not like it's any better. At least it's consistently slow tho.

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Considering the numbers for the sets were set for when the redraw was incorporated, you're not operating under your baseline performance whenever you cause redraw. What you're losing is the "bonus" performance that is allowed if you forgo using an attack string without redraw.

Here's the easy interpretation. It's not an animation penalty for causing redraw. It's an animation discount for not causing redraw.


 

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Here's the easy interpretation. It's not an animation penalty for causing redraw. It's an animation discount for not causing redraw.

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That's what I thought you were saying. Which is relatively senseless in this discussion because no matter how you PHRASE it, the effect is the same. "One way takes longer" is the same thing as "one way takes less time".

So yeah, thanks for backin me up on that. :P


 

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I like elec personally. Ball lightning is a good Targeted AOE as is the elec nuke (can't recall its name). I've been tempted to make a elec/MM but I already have elec/elec in the mid 40s.


Malakim

-Playing since COH beta and still love the game!

 

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AR/Dev with MM.... I always have an AOE attack up and ready to go...

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Well, yeah, there's no question -- once you have AR, Devices, and Mental Manipulation, you've got the AoE power of three powersets. That can't be matched.


If we are to die, let us die like men. -- Patrick Cleburne
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The rule is that they must be loved. --Jayne Fynes-Clinton, Death of an Abandoned Dog