If you want a real blapper, you have two choices for secondary, energy and elec. Primary can be just about anything, although I'd avoid weapon-based sets.
Fire/Energy's pretty good. Elec/Elec, probably great.
Archery and assault rifle I would shun away from, dunno about sonic, otherwise the primary doesnt matter much. Ice,fire and elec are favored i think. Edit: ok if you dont pvp then the primary can be anything.. though its easy to start pvping with a good blapper 
Elec or energy as secondaries are the ones to go if you want good blapper really.
I think Ice has fast activation times on the attacks which would be good. And /elec or /energy are both good. /Elec is pretty cool.
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Archery and assault rifle I would shun away from, dunno about sonic,
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Do Sonic! For all your ST uber damage heaven!
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Archery and assault rifle I would shun away from, dunno about sonic,
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Do Sonic! For all your ST uber damage heaven!
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...and painfully long rooting animations and for making your ears bleed!!
(ok maybe not that bad but Sonic could really need some loving with the animations and audio)
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The animations arent too bad if you only do PvE though.
My Sonic/Energy does great in PvP, i've only been beaten by the 2 out of 4 Ice/Energy's I've dueled and no other.
(Well a Ice/Elec once as well, but that was before my Total Focus!)
[Edit] Just wanted too point out this isn't a brag, just saying that it's good enough too be able to defeat some of the "better" sets. [/Edit]
Jums sonic/nrg does very well in pvp, its good to see someone doing so well outside of the obvious sets.
I am enjoying my elec/elec but wished for ices much faster activation times on many occasions but draining people is a joy in its own right. Its the speed that is what makes ice so favoured as a primary as far as I can see.
/elec has much more powerful attacks lower down the chain and can have your best melee hit at 28 as opposed to 38 for EM but EM has other tricks up its sleeve. All in all i think the balance on these sets are quite good.
Just looking over the other sets and I can see bonuses and balance in pretty much all of them but /fire which seems designed purely to allow blasters to commit suicide in the fastest manner possible. Fire sword seems crazy powerful for a lvl 2 attack but blazing aura and burn seem so out of place imo.
If i was doing another blapper i think I would go ice/elec
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PvE Blapper. Elec/Elec is the ubah
A Paragon Defender
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PvE Blapper. Elec/Elec is the ubah
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Heh, ice or elec primary with elec or nrg secondary, there are other valid combos as stated above, but elec has far better soft control than energy, whuch has far better self buffage than elec. I would say elec elec with the right powers has as good a DPS as the other sets, but you have to get the "gimped" pet, 'cos it's oh so bad, so bad, yeah it's really [/sarcasm]
Plight
P.S. Elec/Elec soloes anyhting any level without reliance on pools generally, imxp it's a great combo, but so is ice/nrg, sonic/nrg, ice/elec and some others
as a matter of fact I do have an ice/ice blaster (if anybody wanders for Defiant server, he's Cold Stone at the moment standing at level 38).
I quite like him (and all my SG mates do the same), though it's my really first char and I chose powers more on a "i feel like" idea than looking at statistics and the likes. Nonetheless it's a good blaster for teaming if you don't mind acting a little bit as a controller debuffing speed and recharge instead of going for the damage. Solo is quite difficult. And I can't say much about PVP cause I did only a few of it.
Strong points: freeze ray and bitter freeze ray: you can hold much people there, ice patch (entertaining seeing enemies slipping there while you gently take them down, though is PBAoE and has small radius, nice tactics could be done with that), chilling embrace and shiver slow *so* much mobs. Blizzard is probably the only last primary power (together with rain of arrows) that is a target AoE instead of PBAoE.
Weak points: no snipe. Attacks are shorter range than other power sets. Bitter freeze ray has a painfully long animation (not interruptible luckily). Damage is a little bit lower than other power lines. Frost Breath is a power that probably must be taken in any case and I don't find it so useful; alternatives to FB are the two melee powers (frozen fists / ice sword) I didn't choose and never tried them.
Most people say an ice/ice is an incomplete controller... well could be. And this is not necessarily a bad point for a blaster. If you don't mind playing more on the tactic instead of the shooting side.
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Weak points: no snipe. Attacks are shorter range than other power sets. Bitter freeze ray has a painfully long animation (not interruptible luckily). Damage is a little bit lower than other power lines. Frost Breath is a power that probably must be taken in any case and I don't find it so useful; alternatives to FB are the two melee powers (frozen fists / ice sword) I didn't choose and never tried them.
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Missing a snipe isn't exactly painful for a blapper and Ice/Ice offers 3 holds in total in return. While we're at range, bitter ice blast (your biggest single terget) is the strongest of all blasters single target attacks (exepts snipes) and it's range is bigger then it's strongest opponent blaze. Frozen fists is indeed alittle lackluster but ice sword is a exellent power, which has comparable damage to ice blast. Ice patch, shiver and CE are indeed very useful and almost mandatory for a blaptroller.
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Most people say an ice/ice is an incomplete controller... well could be. And this is not necessarily a bad point for a blaster. If you don't mind playing more on the tactic instead of the shooting side.
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I would advice not to look at this combo as a incomplete controller. As an ice blaster you have the highest single target damage of all blasters. You lack power in the AoE compartment, which is arguably more useful in teams.
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Attacks are shorter range than other power sets.
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Not sure what you're referring to: Bitter Ice Blast does have a shorter range than some other attacks, but not Ice Bolt or Ice Blast. Depends on what you're comparing it to.
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Damage is a little bit lower than other power lines. Frost Breath is a power that probably must be taken in any case and I don't find it so useful; alternatives to FB are the two melee powers (frozen fists / ice sword) I didn't choose and never tried them.
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AoE damage? Certainly. Which is why you probably do want FB which does decent damage when fully slotted. As Chill says, you should at least consider Ice Sword since you will be in melee quite often.
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Most people say an ice/ice is an incomplete controller... well could be. And this is not necessarily a bad point for a blaster. If you don't mind playing more on the tactic instead of the shooting side.
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You do sacrifice some AoE damage (and a snipe, which is not a great loss imho) for lots of control, but that extra control helps your survivability (which is why ice/ice works nicely if you tend to solo a bit, and I'm surprised you have problems soloing), so it does depend on your playstyle .
CoX 50s: <ill/rad> <ice/ice> <fire/kin> <grav/sonic> <ice/storm> <earth/kin> <kin/elec> <cold/psy> <thugs/dark> <fire/dark> <dark/elec> <night widow> <EM/ninj> <mind/icy>
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Attacks are shorter range than other power sets.
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Not sure what you're referring to: Bitter Ice Blast does have a shorter range than some other attacks, but not Ice Bolt or Ice Blast. Depends on what you're comparing it to.
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When teaming with other blasters (electrical and assault rifle mainly) I felt like I had to stand closer to the target than they. I felt like I received "out of range" when insted they could shoot.
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Damage is a little bit lower than other power lines. Frost Breath is a power that probably must be taken in any case and I don't find it so useful; alternatives to FB are the two melee powers (frozen fists / ice sword) I didn't choose and never tried them.
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AoE damage? Certainly. Which is why you probably do want FB which does decent damage when fully slotted. As Chill says, you should at least consider Ice Sword since you will be in melee quite often.
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Melee range it's not my style...
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Most people say an ice/ice is an incomplete controller... well could be. And this is not necessarily a bad point for a blaster. If you don't mind playing more on the tactic instead of the shooting side.
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You do sacrifice some AoE damage (and a snipe, which is not a great loss imho) for lots of control, but that extra control helps your survivability (which is why ice/ice works nicely if you tend to solo a bit, and I'm surprised you have problems soloing), so it does depend on your playstyle .
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Newbie-ness could also be the problem then... 
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Damage is a little bit lower than other power lines. Frost Breath is a power that probably must be taken in any case and I don't find it so useful; alternatives to FB are the two melee powers (frozen fists / ice sword) I didn't choose and never tried them.
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AoE damage? Certainly. Which is why you probably do want FB which does decent damage when fully slotted. As Chill says, you should at least consider Ice Sword since you will be in melee quite often.
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Melee range it's not my style...
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You play a ranged-only ice/ice blaster? What a shame! With Ice Patch, Chilling Embrace, Shiver, and Freezing Touch, you will be quite safe, and Ice Sword does almost as much damage as Bitter Ice Blast. Try it sometime .
CoX 50s: <ill/rad> <ice/ice> <fire/kin> <grav/sonic> <ice/storm> <earth/kin> <kin/elec> <cold/psy> <thugs/dark> <fire/dark> <dark/elec> <night widow> <EM/ninj> <mind/icy>
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You play a ranged-only ice/ice blaster? What a shame! With Ice Patch, Chilling Embrace, Shiver, and Freezing Touch, you will be quite safe, and Ice Sword does almost as much damage as Bitter Ice Blast. Try it sometime .
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hm. will be worth a try on teest server... Then I'll probably need a respec...
Ice/Energy or Ice/Elec would be the closest to what you want. The /Ice secondary is downright poor for blapping (I think of it as a blaptroller secondary).
Sonic is good as a primary too, if you want single target. I see no particular problems with sonic in PvP, my Kin/Son defender does well in PvP so far.
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Ice/Energy or Ice/Elec would be the closest to what you want. The /Ice secondary is downright poor for blapping (I think of it as a blaptroller secondary).
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Personally i've found ice secondary to be excellent for blapping. It has so much control you are very safe in melee. More of a blaptroller, but both ice sword and frozen fists do decent damage.
I think people also tend to forget you can use your primary attacks in melee range too
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Personally i've found ice secondary to be excellent for blapping. It has so much control you are very safe in melee. More of a blaptroller, but both ice sword and frozen fists do decent damage.
[/ QUOTE ]See, but decent damage is not what blapping is about, it's about HUGE damage
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Personally i've found ice secondary to be excellent for blapping. It has so much control you are very safe in melee. More of a blaptroller, but both ice sword and frozen fists do decent damage.
[/ QUOTE ]See, but decent damage is not what blapping is about, it's about HUGE damage
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No, that's your definition of blapping. Blapping is a blaster crossed with a scrapper. Basically a blaster in melee. /ice just makes it safer to do so. And as ice sword does as much damage near enough as bitter ice blast, that's pretty 'huge'.
But then again compare ice sword to total focus :-s. If it's for the mez, all the melee attacks in /ener do stun also
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But then again compare ice sword to total focus :-s. If it's for the mez, all the melee attacks in /ener do stun also
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True, but TF also takes a long time to activate. You can get frozen fists, ice sword and another attack out in the same time - all whilst stood on the saftey of an ice patch with chilling embrace running - which all give -speed, -recharge and CE gives -DMG.
It's swings and roundabouts - though it would be nice
to replace frozen aura (which has to be one of the worst tier 9 powers) with a greater ice sword or an ice sword circle or something.
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It's swings and roundabouts - though it would be nice
to replace frozen aura (which has to be one of the worst tier 9 powers) with a greater ice sword or an ice sword circle or something.
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Now that, I would love to see...
i'm designing a new toon and have decided to do a blapper. just looking for some advice about which sets to choose. i'm leaning towards an ice/ice combo as this seems to suit my playing style. area effect - ranged - close in for the kill. open to advice please....dont solo or pvp too much