The Quintessential Blaster?

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I want to play a character that epitomizes the essence of a Blaster.


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What you want is an Electric/Fire blaster. Take all the point blank area of effect attacks, skip the hold. Name him Debt Card or something like that.

(yes, I've done this before)

Fire or Energy, Fire for it's incredible damage both ST and AoE (Blasters essence there) or energy, for it's precise AoE/ST balance and the "feel" of being a blaster by knocking stuff to all hell... and nothing gives you the same feeling as nova, nothing in the entire game, and your team will notice it every time.

AR - Missing Aim, sorry, but AIM+BU alpha defines a blasters true role
Arch - Well balanced, strong, a possibility but I find the visuals and draw time to be kind of weak.
Ice - too many controls
Psychic/sonic - animations feel slow, lower damage
Electric - So much lightning so little thunder, not enough bang.

So there's that argument, you can dispute it as a proponent to certain sets... but fire and en put the most cannon in glass cannon.

Fire/MM; Arch/MM, Nrg/Elec, Fire/Nrg, Arch/Nrg. All great AoE DMG, with a nice smattering of Single Target.

I Leveled a Fire/MM and a Fire/Ice to around lvl 12 simultaneously, I ceased playing the Fire/Ice in favor of the Fire/MM because Fireball, Firebreath, and Psyscream were too schmexy to pass up, thats what lured me in, then Drain Psyche got me hooked, then PSW made me Squee, now I drop spawns with Fireball, psyscream, PSW, Fireball. I love him. I have a Arch/MM as well at lvl 44 who played the same as my Fire/MM until RoA, then while the playstyle changed, I still prefered the Fire/MM.

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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.

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Anyway, the powersets make my point for me. Just compare the number of ranged attacks vs. the number melee range attacks.

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Number of powers is a horrible criterion. Compare the number of melee attacks in the Power Pools vs. the number of Recovery-increasing powers there, then apply the same sort of logic.

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Number of powers is a horrible criterion

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Not when the point is what a Blaster is designed to do [u]in general[u]. If it was designed to spend most of its time in melee range, you would have more melee range powers to choose from than ranged ones (the opposite of how it is now). This not to say that one can't successfully blap or maneuver in and out of melee range to work their PBAoEs.

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Number of powers is a horrible criterion

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Not when the point is what a Blaster is designed to do [u]in general[u]. If it was designed to spend most of its time in melee range, you would have more melee range powers to choose from than ranged ones (the opposite of how it is now).

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I still believe quality to be at least as important as quantity.

Thankfully, that whole side argument is irrelevant. The point is not what Blasters were designed to do five years ago. The point is what they actually do, today.

Well, here's a little update on my Blaster. After hitting level 11, I ran a Positron with two other Blasters and a Tanker. When I got Aim at 12, the Blasters would take turns Aim + AoE'ing the groups, which would in turn drop like flies. I think we had two deaths and the final time was 1:46 or so.

After Positron I ran a Synapse with my brother and some friends. It was a full team, but I could definitely notice how much the other Blaster and I were contributing in terms of damage--it seemed like all the minions would drop and the lieutenants would be down to about .25-.5. Due to a herd-happy Tanker, the Tanker/Scrappers got their fair share of kills while the Blaster AoEs were recharging, though. The completion time wasn't nearly as impressive, but still a respectable 2:28.

And then last night I ran a Sister Psyche with my brother and some people from a global channel I'm in. Due to a lack of mentors and someone being set to Invincible, we were sometimes fighting +4-+5, and for one person, +6 Freak Tanks. We didn't have a huge amount of deaths (three Defenders and two Tankers), but the killing was very slow. So slow, in fact, that I eventually stopped being annoyed about the time and was making jokes about it. When fighting the +4-+5 Freaks, my damage wasn't very impressive, even with Aim+Build Up. However, once they got into +0-+3 range, I started melting mobs and feeling like a Blaster again. I picked up Ice Patch at 22 and used it to full effect on a group of Council by dropping it on a corner and pulling a full group of Council around. Only one or two had the LoS to hit me, but my Fireball hit all of them for a nice chunk of their health. >

All in all, I'm enjoying my Blaster very much. Hover Blasting has proven much more effective than I thought it would, and this Blaster attempt is much more resilient than my others. I'm looking forward to getting some of my other utility powers from Ice Manipulation. Maybe I'll post another update at the point.

Wow, that was a lot more verbose than I thought it was going to be.

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At its core, I disagree with this definition. Inferno, Short Circuit, Fire Sword Circle, and Havoc Punch are just a few very good melee-range attacks.

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The exceptions are not the rule. Blasters, overall, do their most effective work outside of melee range (you know this).

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I'm going to disagree with this as well. In general, the hardest hitting ST blaster attacks are all melee. Blasters are all about damage, regardless of whether it is at range or melee.

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AR - Missing Aim, sorry, but AIM+BU alpha defines a blasters true role
Arch - Well balanced, strong, a possibility but I find the visuals and draw time to be kind of weak.


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These are the two strongest AOE damage blaster sets. When you have a mini-nuke up every 30 seconds, the others pale in comparison.

If we're going by design, what is a Blaster with the /Fire secondary designed to do?

Cause I can't tell ...

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If we're going by design, what is a Blaster with the /Fire [u]secondary[u] designed to do?

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Use some melee range powers from his secondary set to compliment or contrast the powers from his primary set (most of which are ranged attacks)...giving him diversity.

I've never implied that Blasters have to be one-dimensional.

Not when the point is what a Blaster is designed to do in general. If it was designed to spend most of its time in melee range, you would have more melee range powers to choose from than ranged ones (the opposite of how it is now

I believe other than devices you get 5-7 melee powers & one range in the secondaries. Primaries give you about 6-8 range powers. Not really the barn breaking majority you imply. It indicates melee can be just as important on many builds, if not more so, than range.

A blasters job is damage pure and simple. Where he does the damage from is not as important as the fact he makes the orange numbers keep coming. What range you do it from depends on build, playstyle, or teams you run with.

But blasters fixated on range only as a defense are just as silly as hardcore melee only blappers to me. You have a mix of powers so why not use them all?

EDIT: And to answer the OP along those lines. You'd be hard pressed to find a better blaster set then AR/Eng/Force if you ask me. Everything from a boost ranged full auto to a power boosted Total focus. You cover every end of the range spectrum and have bagoodles of damage to boot.

For what you like, my vote for Fire/MM.

But give it some time to blossom. And know also that blasters become incredible at 50 when you soft cap their range defense with IO sets (that can be achieved pretty cheaply if you dont go crazy on recharge).

Sonic/Ice.

Try it a while

Look over the powers and think of what they can do stacked together.

2 sleeps. Multiple holds. AoE's.

You are a controller with blaster damage. You CAN solo most 8 man groups. Sleep x2 and Howl. Sleep. Aoe and sleep again. Seriously you can singlehandedly stop that extra group that tries to join.