[City of Knowledge] Blasters:Did I just die there?
hehe a few mistakes in there (due to cutting and pasting you lazy sod) and im sure a few ppl will pick holes in it but as a first draft (im sure you will improve it after comments!!) a nice guide for new blasters 
Some i've seen, yet some based on experience:
LRM rocket is a snipe, thus have to be used as 1.
Ignite is 1 of the strongest powers i've seen, once u imm or hold a mob (specialy AV fights this is quite easy) having a BU /secondairy and hasten it does tremendous DoT damage.
Bonfire is what fire epic can make teams go insane. If u put it at the wrong places, mobs will scatter all over te place instead of having them packed nicely. Kinda compared with nrg blasters.
Note to nrg blasters, the castingtime is rather annoying long. Even the startoff power has longer casting then others, higher lvl about the same. But used properly, the cone knockback is a awsome strong power.
EMP of ele is stun, not hold (or it was the defender one). The -regen only last about 15 seconds, but combined with /nrg powerboost its a insane strong power. sadly uber long recharge. The drain is very strong, PB/3slot endmod drains equal lvl bosses.
Cold mastery next to force is the strongest in PvP. The toggle -spd/-rch is very strong, hibernate is just fun and shield helps alot. Flashfreeze is great on range, unlike /ice 38 power. Added that it has a way larger radius, making the 38 power quite lousy (it has 10 or 15ft iirc).
/ice hold power is melee, sometimes abit dangerous compared to /elec hold or a epic hold.
I'll add some stuff later if i can find any, thus far, very very nice guide.
50)Sinergy X/(50)Mika.
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I agree on the Ignite thing, it defintiely bears mentioning in the guide.
Also, one of the defining powers in Archery is Blazing Arrow. It does incredible single target damage (almost as much as Archery's snipe, without the long snipe animation) and is every bit a must-have as the Rain of Arrows. Certainly bears mentioning.
caltrops - this power has his strength due the fear it cast. Mobs try to run away from it, upto bosses. AV/EB recently been pathed to less likely try to run of it. Although mobs can still atack, it can lower the incomming damage massively.
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Thanks for the first advice. That was exactly what I was hoping for!
I was fairly certain, that maybe I had 80-90% right. And if people keep correcting like this, both new and experiences players might use this thread to get new ideas what to roll next.
I have reached the point when I have brought a few one to 40-50 (BS-Regen Scrapper, Warshade, Illu/Rad Controller, AR/Eng Blaster) and was wondering, what to play next.
This guide is aimed to answer this question for me and for others.
[Plus I learned that I should respec Ignite into my Blaster...which so far I completely left out.]
Oh nearly forgot, the fire/ AoE story. The 'AoE' strength of fire isnt the primairy, but their secondairy. Only firebreath/flameball are the primairies effect of AoE, but can be countered easy with elec (ball lignthing and shortcircuit).
Elec is even stronger, since next to the target-AoE the other is a PBAoE, wich synergies stronger with the 3 /fire PBAoEs. Added the drain that suits consume, making toe-to-toe fighting against no-endurance mobs safer then having fire/.
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[ QUOTE ]
Also, Tripmines allow Webmining, i.e. using it as a powerful melee attack: Use Web Grenade on an enemy, run directly to him and plant a trip mine directly under his immobilized feet.
[/ QUOTE ]
Never tried this one. Not about to neither. Tripmining is interruptable, immobs dont prevent attacks, melee position is alot less safer than ranged, the damage over animation time of trip mine is easily beaten by ranged attacks. If I toebomb I am usually solo and its usually stacking a Tripmine with a Timebomb without being seen and have them go off together with a possible full auto (AR) in that moment...lights out group..or if its gonna take more than that for the whole group then the timebomb+tripmine is just a pull to more tripmines!
I kind of like what ya doin in a way. Negative opinions are few and far between. If it was me doing this I wouldnt have any personal descriptive opinions. Itll be mainly numbers and on any power(s) I couldnt find a use for, Id be asking other people for a suggestive use. Which I gather is why your posting in this section before going straight to the guides section and I like that. You have already passed this lot through on the Zukunft forums I would gather. Well its turning out quite nice.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
ss + cloacking decvices run up to a group and plant time bomb and trip mine.
Hiho!
@Shannon: Thanks for the answer. Glad you like - I just want to keep people having fun with CoH (egoistic if you consider that I want it to stay successful).
Nope, didn't pass it through the Zukunft forums. This is the first draft. But I have a little experience from "Ultimate Warshading" my extensive i9+playstyle WS guide.
@all: Well, I'll start working in the improvments...! Thanks so far, but please would you kindly keep going?
EDIT: Improvements have been included, I'll wait for some more before I repost. Thanks!
I thought SS stops stealth when u dont move?
50)Sinergy X/(50)Mika.
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Just a few things
Taser in Devices is a great tool for perma stunning bosses when combined with Beanbag from the AR set, as it's no longer melee only this makes it quite versatile and hand bit of extra control.
Last time I checked Targetting Drone only provided bonus damage for Sniper Rifle, not the entire AR set.
Redrawing a weapon Does Not delay or interfere with DPS this has been confirmed by Back Alley Brawler here.
[ QUOTE ]
Just a few things
Taser in Devices is a great tool for perma stunning bosses when combined with Beanbag from the AR set, as it's no longer melee only this makes it quite versatile and hand bit of extra control.
Last time I checked Targetting Drone only provided bonus damage for Sniper Rifle, not the entire AR set.
Redrawing a weapon Does Not delay or interfere with DPS this has been confirmed by Back Alley Brawler here.
[/ QUOTE ]
I think the bonus damage to sniper attack was never added to the game in the end, I think it was in the patch notes but not actually added to the game (haven't seen any dev confirmation on this but seen it mentioned on the US forums many times).
It was added, the extra damage done appears as a separate packet from the damage done by the attack (Including a separate tick of orange numbers above the target). The combat blurb says something along the lines of "the additional accuracy of the Targeting Drone adds X extra lethal damage to your sniper rifle".
I play my AR/Dev blaster at least twice a week and use Snipe regularly so it's a common sight for me.
And it's only the Sniper Rifle that receives a bonus? How big is it?
I heard something about 20%?
Yeah, only Sniper Rifle. I'm not sure on the numbers as I've never taken time to try and work it out. I'll take a look at my logs tonight and see how the numbers pan out.
[ QUOTE ]
Redrawing a weapon Does Not delay or interfere with DPS this has been confirmed by Back Alley Brawler here.
[/ QUOTE ]
I more got the feeling he's talking about weapon-attack -> idle -> attack (thus redraw). As he says: weapon draw animation time + plus attack animation time.
So going weapon -> 2ndairy attack -> weapon has a significant delay compared to non-weapon attackchain. Specialy powers like the 2ndairy immobilize or even webnade/stun should be done while holding the weapon, like the inherent power of your archtype.
This is quite noticable if u use ignite alot combined with a 2ndairy immobilize and compare it when u use freezeray/ignite.
50)Sinergy X/(50)Mika.
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[ QUOTE ]
I thought SS stops stealth when u dont move?
[/ QUOTE ]You thought wrong.
Nice guide Spirit !
I'll just defend the fire primary a bit : it's really the best primary for AoE's with AR (no comparaison with elec)
2 good AoE's:
- firebreath is really the better of the game in term of rentability damage/endurance cost/recharge his only flaw is the long animation time (like 3s)
- fireball is good also, a medium AoE's who need less placement than firebreath.
rain of fire : the third AoE who stacks very well with ice/devices blaster secondaries, trollers, ice tanks (secondary or primary), TA, storm, dark defenders, ... It can do really nice damage, make a cover for retrait, protect blasters from melee ... It's a really really nice power.
It's not a deadfull primary, the secondary 'll do a lot, some of them give good mitigation damage : boost range, calltrops, ice patch are the better one
Ice's holds : one of them is an opener who deals more damage (bitter freeze ray) (better range, higher endurance cost, animation time and recharge time) and the other is better in fight (freeze ray).
We can discuss this very long, but clearly you never played a elec/fire/elec. It totaly rely on playstyle, a safe ranger can even pick ice for best AoE, best does not always mean damage-wise.
They all have great AoE abilities, but at the end its playstyle that makes the best of it.
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i was thinking about damage and comparing between primaries it's true
i'm agree that elec would better beneficiate of secondary fire because it's melee orientation with short circuit, for fire primary i would say ice, devices or energy.
i tried also a bit elec/nrg, the best drain you can have because power boost is coming back really faster than consume, too much possibilities in this game it's really great.
Id imagine the weekend is the best time to get the most feedback and so Id wait till after the weekend before rounding things up and finish a guide.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
lol I imagined wrong!
weekends are times people generally have more time to think.
my pooter "finally" went down 
wont start now, so alot of what i could of done i cant cos info is unobtainable but have a new pooter in 3 days and will likely make the old hard drive of my old one a slave drive so that i can get back on it.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
Pooter... i like that name 
pooooooter.. my personal pooter. I go play my pooter, u got Vista on your pooter? My pooter wont start, how many pooters u got? p00t p00t!
50)Sinergy X/(50)Mika.
(50)MaceX/(50)Encore
Sign the petition, dont let CoH go down! SIGN!
"weekends are times people generally have more time to think."
EDIT:
"weekends are times people generally have more time to drink."
Updated version will be up shortly. 
City of Knowledge is supposed to become a comprehensive guide to the different archetypes. Goal was that the read might answer the simple question:
This will be one of the longer explanations!
"I will roll a new $archetype. What should I pick, what cool powers are there?"
So far I can only answer this for the blaster, others will follow. This guide is by no means complete and my English might be a bit odd to me being German and all. Except from that, please do take a look at what "ze Germanz" wrote and feel free to comment and improve.
[u]Blasters: Did I just die there?[u]
Ranged and Melee Offense at all cost with minor controllerish trickery up their sleeves Blasters are the CoH Archetype coming closest to the glass cannon often referenced.
Also Blasters are pretty good at boosting their own damage output thus drawing even more enemy attention. Blasters will either very quickly see foes fall, see themselves biting the dust or both simultaneously.
Blaster Inherent: Defiance
Defiance is basically a simple rule: The lower your health gets, the bigger is the damage buff you receive. In early levels this can be quite useful as it increases your damage output.
Later on, as teams get bigger, enemies get higher levels compared to the team and hit harder, Defiance becomes rather obsolete. A Blaster basically is alive or dead.
[u]Primary Powersets: Ranged Offense with minor control[u]
Primary Powersets often feature a mix of
Single target attacks (often with additional effects like knockback or endurance drain)
Attacks that hit multiple targets (either as PbAoE, ranged AoE or Cone).
Selfbuffs like Aim that bring huge buffs to ToHit and damage for a brief time
One Snipe a high damage attack with exceptional range, which can be interrupted and has a rather long cast time. Can be used for pulling enemies.
Ranged Status attacks: those mostly deal minor damage but hold or disorient foes. Yet, the status effects caused by these are often minor and need stacking with other powers to incapacitate bigger foes.
As 32 power Blasters tend to get a huge-damage-long-recharge attack, but those do vary.
Primary Powersets are:
o Archery
o Assault Rifle (AR)
o Electrical Blast (Elec)
o Energy Blast (Eng)
o Fire Blast
o Ice Blast
o Sonic Attack
Secondary Powerset: Melee Offense with added trickery
o Electricity Manipulation
o Energy Manipulation
o Fire Manipulation
o Devices
o Ice Manipulation
Archery
Archers get the luxury of a higher base accuracy, making the first levels a lot easier and being convenient (but arguably less important) later on.
Ranged Powerset dealing mostly lethal damage (later on widely resisted) with good single target attacks.
Mix of Cone and AoE attacks
But: Lacks damage against multiple enemies until Rain of Arrows at 32 (only: Fistful of Arrows: one cone attack with moderate damage hitting up to 5 enemies and: Explosive Arrow with moderate damage)
Huge draw duration: a secondary Powerset that makes you redraw often can go on your nerves. On the plus side, we are wielding a COOL looking fibre glass bow.
Oh, merry meeheen!
Has the very nice Aim power:
+62,5% Damage (and 37,5% ToHit Buff) roughly every minute (with slotting and Hasten) for 10 seconds
One OK Disorient (Stunning Shot) allows soft control even better when stacked with some stunning from the secondary powersets.
Excellent 32 power with Rain of Arrows This baby will be up every time you have Aim (and depending on your secondary Build Up ready) so roughly every 45 seconds with some slotting.
At level 50 this power will do roughly 550 damage (including slotting and Build Up and Aim) to up to 16 enemies every 45 seconds e.g. every or every second group of enemies. Nice! [If you find an enemy group without lethal resistance at 50 In reality it might be more like 450 damage]
Rain of Arrows does not leave you drained of endurance.
Assault Rifle
Riflemen are kinda similar to archers, with some important differences.
They, too, have a bonus to accuracy which is a bit smaller.
They, too, do mostly Lethal damage (with the exception of Flamethrower, which reasonably does fire damage.) and are good against single targets.
The first difference comes into play when we talk about cone or AoE attacks. AR is a lot more Cone-heavy which has both up and downsides. On the plus side, the Flamethrower (wide, medium range cone) comes in at Lv18 giving them good potential to damage multiple enemies early on.
Also: The area of Cones increased, when the range of the attack is increased.
This makes AR a very good set against multiple enemies.
The downside is that cones need a bit of setting up to hit optimally and in some cases can overshoot and aggro more enemies than desired.
Now for the downsides. In comparison with the sleek bow of archery the rifle is a sad peace of steampunk design. If it fits the character, fine. If you intend to play a sleek female assassin, forget it.
It does not have Aim. This is really pants. Aim is a 62,5% damage boost available almost 20% of the playtime and a huge ToHit Buff. The lack of aim is a real downside.
It has a disorient very similar to archery, which already comes in at level 8 and makes soloing a lot easier.
AR can set a piece of ground on fire, causing a fear effect and doing damage. (I mention this, because it is pretty fancy and unique NOT because I consider it good. If you can root an enemy this is mighty nice, but I never found much use for it)
The 32 Power is Full Auto. This is a narrow, long-range cone, available roughly every 30-60 seconds (depending on slotting). Its really narrow so it needs a good setup, and it roots you for the horribly long animation.
Sounds bad? No it isnt! This is a cone, Flamethrower is a cone. So before every mob you set yourself up, target well, Build Up (if you have it) and first flame and the Full Auto away. With the result that you see a HUGE number of DoTs ticking down over the enemies heads.
Over the next 7 seconds (during which you are an immobile practice target - you better have a decent tank or controller ) almost 800 points of damage (~320 fire, ~570 lethal) will tick down on your enemies.
That works each group every group giving you very nice damage potential against multiple enemies.
Full Auto does not leave you drained of Endurance.
Electrical Blast
Elec is the first of the elemental blaster sets and differs greatly from the weapon blasters (Archers and Riflemen).
As the name implies this set does little resisted energy damage which is good. (Ironically, the energy portion of elec blast is bigger than eng blast. Go figure )
This set delivers excellent single target damage with the additional (very useful) endurance drain effect on the targets. The EndDrain is said to be very useful for PvP if properly slotted. Malta Sapper anyone?
Elec starts with 75% base accuracy. Before DO Enhancements you will miss quite a lot.
With Short Circuit you can not only reduce enemies endurance but also cripple their recovery. This is useful when soloing and in PvP but has questionable use in bigger teams. Presumably an Elec/Elec Blaster with proper slotting can drain an enemy fully of endurance with Short Circuit and Power Sink.
Elec has Aim. Hooray!
Instead of a disorient, Elec gets a full blown hold, which is nice.
Also, at lv 26 Elecs get a nice little pets which further adds to damage and EndDrain.
The 32 power of Elecs is different from the weapon blasters. Elecs get a Boom! A tremendous attack ready roughly every 3 minutes which devastates up to 16 enemies as a ranged AoE. Yet it leaves you drained of all endurance.
With slotting, Build Up and Aim this darling does more than 850 damage at level 50 (200 smashing and 650 Energy).
Woah!
Energy Blast
Also one of the elemental blasters, Eng know mostly for its secondary effect: Knockback!
The knockback is that strong that solo and in small teams it acts as good soft control. If they are flying around, they arent attacking. Also, in PvP Eng-Knockback can pretty easy overcome weaker knockback protections.
But in bigger teams (especially when the Energy Blaster is a latecomer) Energy Torrent and Explosive Blast are known to have driven Tanks, Kineticists, Rad-guys, Scrappers and damage dealers (well, basically everybody) to insanity.
Eng starts with 75% base accuracy. Before DO Enhancements you will miss quite a lot.
As the name implies this set mostly does little resisted energy damage which is good.
Energy does not have a Hold or Disorient. Knockback is apparently control enough.
Elec has Aim. Hooray!
The 32 power is similar to Elec: huge Boom with Enddrain. But this time you have to get up close since its PbAoE. Also, once again, this attack has a HUGE knockback. So your team will have to pick up the strays.
With slotting, Build Up and Aim Nova dishes out 810 damage (170 smashing, 640 energy) at lv 50.
Also, Nova leaves the targets drained of all endurance, increasing the chances of blaster survival facing the remaining enemies.
Fire Blast
The AoE king and debt addict that is called the fire blaster is for people living on the edge. Fire is an Elemental Blaster offering many ways to damage single or multiple enemies. If you want damage go fire.
The fire blaster dishes out yeah, you could guess a lot of fire damage. This is good and rarely resisted.
The secondary effect of fire blast is damage over time. Dont expect ANYTHING like soft control or even a hold. The enemies of fire blasters are controlled when they are DOWN.
Fire starts with 75% base accuracy. Before DO Enhancements you will miss quite a lot.
Fire has Aim too. Nice! Even more damage.
Fire has Rain of Fire, one of the loved and hated Powers in the game. Its moderate damage over time in a huge are, but has a fear effect. Enemies will run around like headless chicken und then kill the fireblaster or his teammates. Its a decent attack if the enemies are immobilised. Overall an unpopular power in teams, at least on par with Knockback of Energy.
The lv 32 attack Inferno is one of the better Booms. It leaves you fully drained and it is PbAoE so gotta get into the middle of the enemies. But hey, fire blasters are per definition risk takers. It does 810 damage (170 smashing, 640 fire) at lv 50. But this damage is the Minimum. Each enemy will take a random multiple between 1 and 9 of 50 damage. Thus: 810 plus an additional 450!
Gotta love the damage of fire!
Fire is recommended for people either with good SGs and thus good teams or higher frustration tolerance. In mediocre teams, fire tends to draw huge amounts of enemy attention.
Ice Blast
Another of the elemental blast sets and concept-wise beautifully designed pretty much the opposite of fire.
Ice has few attacks damaging multiple opponents but is very good at single targets. This is great for smaller teams, but in larger teams one might miss the AoE punch.
The secondary effect of ice is slow (both movement and recharge) making it very useful in PvE and PvP.
Ice starts with 75% base accuracy. Before DO Enhancements you will miss quite a lot.
Also, ice offers by far the best control of all blaster primaries: not one, but two rather good holds. A Controller would be proud.
Ice Storm is similar to rain of fire, yet a bit better. The large slow effect leaves the enemies running around like slow headless chicken. Slotted for Slow it might prove a nice combination with Blizzard (32 attack) for improved slowing.
Ice has Aim, too.
The lv32 attack is a pimped version of Ice Storm. And when I say pimped, I dont mean improved. I mean: Literally multiplied with the factor 10. Enemies still run around like the aforementioned chicken, but:
Blizzard tremendously slow enemies and dishes out almost 1.500 damage at lv 50 (750 lethal, 750 ice as damage over 15 seconds). If you have a way to hold enemies that long, few will be standing.
Sonic Attack
Interesting set, that is ! Its rather an elemental than a weapon Blasterset, but in fact it is a bit different to all the other sets. Why, you ask? Because it features a significant resistance debuff (well, some AR attacks have a minor defense debuff, but those dont count).
Thus, sonic attacks are a mix of somewhat lower base damage and a debuff, increasing not only ones own damage output but of the whole team.
o Although: an enemy cant be debuffed below -20% resistance to any damage. This means a foe with no resistance at all will take 20% more damage due to sonic debuffs.
o But (!!!) multiple applications of sonic debuffs will help significantly against enemies with higher resistances.
o Sonic does smashing and energy damage, mostly in a 50:50 relation.
o How does that work?
Imagine an enemy with 40% S/L resistance and no energy resistance.
Thus, if you hit him with 100 damage (50 smashing, 50 energy), he will take 80 damage (the 50 smashing damage reduced by 40%).
Now, if you manage to apply a -40% resistance debuff on him (well, with three stacked attacks, you get 39%, so thats close) he will take:
50 smashing damage (smashing resistance goes down to 0%), which is 20 more
60 energy damage (due to his -20% against energy), which is 10 more
o Thus: the sonic debuff is significantly stronger on foes with high resistances. Ask Invul-Tanks about resist debuffs
o This is especially useful in later levels and for Blapper-type characters (Blasters relying on melee) who have a higher S/L component to their attacks.
Much like energy, sonic features some high-knockback attacks. Although sonics can pick powers avoiding them completely which energy cant.
Sonic has the nice Amplify, which is identical to Aim.
Sonic has little to no AoE attacks except the boom (one small cone and a high knockback cone).
To make up for this, sonic not only has the excellent resistance debuff but a lot of soft and hard control: You get a sleep effect at 18 with a long (!) duration and a disorient effect at 26. Also, the Boom at 32 has an included disorient effect.
The Boom at lv 32 does excellent damage (980 with amplify, build up and slotting), disorients all foes and reduces their resistance. Nice. Gotta get me some of that!
[u]Secondary Powersets: Melee attacks with many tircks[u]
Secondary Powersets consist of
Very strong melee attacks, matching the damage of a Scrapper. With the upside that Blasters tend to have damage types resisted less often and with the downside that it isnt actually healthy for a blaster to stay in melee range of bigger foes for too long.
The secondaries include Build Up (except for devices), which is a huge (100%) damage buff and a minor (15%) ToHit Buff.
Except for that, they include some minor control and added trickery.
Secondary Powersets are:
Electricity Manipulation
Energy Manipulation
Fire Manipulation
Devices
Ice Manipulation
Electricity Manipulation
One of the elemental melee sets, elec is one the choice blapper sets. You get three very nice melee attacks. But: Many of the powers require you to be very close to your enemies and tend to draw large amounts of aggro.
Elec once again drains endurance. If you can stack this with Elec/Elec, this really adds up.
The first power is a sub par immobilisation effect. You gotta take this, dont bother.
Elec has three very good melee attacks which all have secondary effects: End drain (all three), minor Sleep (the first two) and Disorient (the third).
You get an AoE damage aura, which draws huge amounts aggro, drains a lot of end, but later on adds to your damage per second quite nicely.
Electricity gets Build Up, the second self-buff power together with Aim at Level 16.
Also, you gain Lightning Clap, an PbAoE Disorient, combined with the dreaded knockback. Might be good for soloing.
Power Sink, the lv 35 power lets you leech endurance from your foes, depleting them and replenishing yourself. Very nice but comes only late in the game.
The lv 38 power is a mediocre Hold which gives you even more control although the numbers look unimpressive to say the least.
Energy Manipulation
Energy Manipulation has the blaster secondary animation that takes most getting used to. Its mostly orange/pink energy pom-poms around your hands. Many People dont like it, I dont mind.
The first power you get is actually one of the decent ones. Power Thrust with one accuracy SO or IO in it will knock back almost all foes, giving you time to breathe and getting them out of melee range.
The excellent Build Up can be picked at Level 4! Whoohoo.
Just like Elec, Energy Manipulation has three very good Melee attacks if you want to blap. All three of them have either a minor disorient effect (the first two) or a strong disorient effect (the third) built in. Thus, if you have other means of disorienting you can keep bosses perma stunned quite easily.
Except from that, Energy is one of the the swiss knifes of blaster secondaries. You get many unusual but very interesting self-buff powers.
o Conserve Power at 16 halves all Endurance used by 50% for 90 seconds. Although the recharge on this one is so HORRIBLY long that even with slotting its up only 1/3 of the time. So, it doesnt solve End-problems, it just eases them some of the time. Nice, no must.
o Power Boost at 28 doubles all the secondary effects of your powers.
What the hell does that mean?
It boosts Holds, Heals, Immobs, EndDrains and much more.
Also, you can get it running more than 50% of game time. A few possibilities here: With the medicine Pool, you can dish out quite decent single target heals. Medicines Aid Self gives you a 60% self heal, available every few seconds. Your Holds will be almost in controllerish dimensions.
o Boost Range at 35 doubles the range of all your ranged powers. Plus, it can be made perma, just with slotting.
Once again this power needs a little explaining.
If you can throw flares 60 yards or 95 yards thats no big difference. It makes it a bit safer, but same damage, etc.
BUT: It allows you to start stacking Holds or disorients on enemies before they are in range of attacking you. With proper slotting you can e.g. disorient a boss before he gets into range of touching you.
BUT: The thing about holds isnt the best. The best is: CONES. If you boost range a power like fireball, not much will change itll just fly further and set the same radius on fire. But if you boost range Flamethrower or Full Auto their area will in effect significantly increase as they are cones. Excellent, excellent, set defining power, if you got a primary with good cones.
o The 38 power is a great melee attack with a built in disorient. Nothing to dislike about this.
Fire Manipulation
Fire is the damage king, both primary and secondary. It contains not one, but two damage auras (Blazing Aura and Hot Feet the second even slowing enemies) and a very good PbAoE (Fire Sword Circle). Thus a good Fire-Blaster is able to arrest very quickly, an excellent Fire-Blaster can arrest all before he is in the dust.
Fire both secondary and primary has little control and the secondary effect to the attacks damage being more damage (over time). Also, many attacks require you to be very close to your foes. Thus, you will be living on the edge. Go for it!
The first power is once again a pretty useless Immob with little damage.
Fire Sword, the second attack is a great melee attack.
With Combustion and Fire Sword Circle you get two PbAoE melee attacks very early. In early levels, these will be more than enough to rob most tanks of the aggro.
The nice Build Up arrives at 16.
Consume is the first and only utility attack. You replenish your Endurance at the cost of nearby enemies.
Burn sets the ground beneath your feet on fire, freeing you from Immobilisation effects, causing enemies to run away from you and doing little damage. Mediocre power, not really set defining.
At 38 you dont get a huge melee attack like energy or elec, but you second damage aura, making you THE damage dealer versus multiple foes and THE aggro magnet driving tanks crazy.
Devices
Devices is much unlike the other three elementary sets. Basically it is the most unique secondary set with specific ups and downs. Although it is often considered weak (mostly due to the lack of build up), it has its uses and can be tremendous fun.
Almost all devices can be used to very interesting effects in combination with primaries or in combination with one another. I will elaborate on this further as I dont like the notion of sets being useless.
The first power is probably the best it-is-the-first-you-have-to-take-it power for blasters. Not only is it a strong immob and has a fly effect (nasty in PvP) built in, it is also a significant slow effect (-50 fly, run and recharge to enemies). If you stack the slow this can be very annoying in PvP and useful in teams as slow is one of the least resisted effects.
The second power is caltrops. Everybody who has dealt with caltrops using foes knows those can be a royal pain in the well, I digress. Caltrops are a location based AoE that slow foes significantly (although this time only their runspeed) and does minor damage. They are autohit, thus also a great way to negate stealthed melee enemies (i.e. Stalkers) in PvP. Plus Caltrops take excellent IOs making them even more versatile.
Well, the taser is a medium disorient effect and unspectacular altogether.
The targeting drone on the other hand, makes this set very interesting once again also for PvP. You get an excellent ToHit Buff (in between a Defenders Tactics and Tanks or Scrappers Focussed Accuracy) at low endurance cost, a high resistance to ToHit Debuffs and increased perception. Also, me thinks, it grants a 20% damage buff to all Assault Rifle attacks (in order to compensate for this combinations lack of Aim OR Build Up). One of the set defining powers!
Smoke Grenade is another interesting skill. It renders enemies almost blind. This in combined with say Cloaking Device or Stealth or a Stealth IO or some of those allows you to act unseen among foes unless you dish out damage.
The next power Cloaking Device is an improved Stealth: no movement penalty, lower end cost and the same effect. Nice! Plus, if you run around cloaked, smoked enemies take no notice of you taking non-damaging action. Ill come to the possibilities of this later.
The trip mine allows for safe soloing bosses without relying on contolling them. If you set up 5-6 Trip Mines (they recharge quickly) and pull a boss into it, he doesnt stand much of a chance. Also, Tripmines allow Webmining, i.e. using it as a powerful melee attack: Use Web Grenade on an enemy, run directly to him and plant a trip mine directly under his immobilized feet.
The 35 power, the time bomb is an interesting power. Just a stronger Version of the trip mine with a tremendous recharge (360, unslotted) and the downside that it isnt set off by enemy movement but by a timer for some.
If you combine this with Smoke Grenade and Cloaking Device you basically get a second but smaller Boom that you place in the enemies middle while hidden. This requires understanding and help of the team but is said to be well worth it.
Both mines have a component of lethal damage of more than 50% - so expect only parts of your damage to arrive.
The 38 power once again is interesting, too. You build a gun turret on the ground that does moderate damage. Ooh, and it uses tremendous endurance and takes a huge time to set up which is: interruptible. Well, thats unspectacular, one might think.
But it has some added advantages: it is auto-hit and it consumes no endurance afterwards. Thus it adds some nice (although lethal and thus very resisted) damage to longer fights.
Thus devices in its current form is far from perfect but still an interesting pick.
Ice Manipulation
Ice is one of the elemental secondary sets and by far the most controllerish among the lot.
Ice gets two medium sized Melee attacks and a wide array of control tools. So, dont expect Ice to do loads of damage but to control and reduce incoming damage.
Ice once again slows, thus providing additional soft control. To be precise: Ice slows A LOT. Basically, if you stack enough slows you are able to render an enemy pretty helpless. Attacks slow, a PbAoE Toggle slows additionally plus another hold that slows, too, and you are very short of an offensive controller.
If you take a primary thats heavy on holds (i.e. Ice) you can stack three full holds rather quickly. And in PvP thatll help bringing down any hold protection very quickly.
Ice gets the very nice Build Up at 16.
Also, you will have access to the wonderful Ice Patch, one of the greatest soft control powers in the game. This power will allow you to lock down a herded group of any size for 30seconds.
The 38 skill is an interesting one. Its an PbAoE Sleep Toggle. So basically, if you use some form of stealth (i.e. Super Speed, Stealth, Stealth IO) that fully disguises you, just hop in the middle of a mob, go unnoticed till everyone is asleep, then procedd to hold and arrest the foes one by one. Performed correctly this allows for very low risk but end heavy soloing or grouping.
All in all, if you pick xxx/Ice or even Ice/Ice consider looking into Controllers, too.
[u]The Epic/Ancillary Pools[u]
The epic power pools (this is the old name nowadays they are called ancillary as a form of expectations management, I assume) are unlocked at 41 and offer nice and additional gadgetry.
The Epic Pools are:
Cold Mastery
Electric Mastery
Flame Mastery
Force Mastery
Munitions Mastery
So, what are they? Epics are rather diverse. But in general most but not all offer some of the following:
Some control usually a Hold or Sleep or both
Some shield either defense or resistance, usually a toggle, sometimes and auto power
Some types of debuffs
Utility powers
Little in terms of additional damage
A quick Walk-Through:
Cold Mastery
Once again the controller among the epics. If you are going Ice/Ice/Ice you are just a Controller in denial.
Snow Storm is a decent Debuff. A Toggle that reduces an enemies recharge and runspeed and also the speed of all enemies in the vicinity. It is a targeted toggle, thus requires an Anchor. Thus, as long as the targeted foe lives, all those around him are debuffed. Nice but a bit tricky depending on the team.
Flash Freeze is a targeted AoE sleep, and as most AoE Sleeps rather useless in larger teams. Although Sleeps do use the excellent and cheap Call of the Sandman Set.
Frozen Armor is a Defense-Armor and nice as such. Not only does it take very interesting sets (5 Red Fortune + 1 Luck of the Gambler = 20% of Perma Hasten) but it also mitigates quite a bit of damage.
Hibernate is a comfort power and panic button. Work very nicely without any slots and either allows you to regenerate to 100% Health and Endurance in 8-10 seconds or allows you to escape from the battle for 30 seconds.
For more daring blasters this can make you a makeshift tank for 30 secs:
Tank tanking Lord Recluse goes down? [censored]. Hit him (Recluse, not the faceplanted tank) once or twice with your attacks and Aggro should be guaranteed, then hit Hibernate. If done correctly, you will see Recluse beating down on you invulnerable Ice fortress for 30 secs while the tank is rezzed and buffed.
Although at 47 this comes late.
Elec Mastery
Is one of the End-Drainers but rather unspectacular except from that.
It gives you a short range cone attack draining a little End from the foes and doing minor to moderate damage. Looks VERY unspectacular.
It gives you a nice Hold and a weak resistance based shield.
The EMP once again is a powerful AoE Hold that also completely stops enemies regeneration and recovery. All the Radiation Defenders and Controllers out there know that stopping AVs Regen is a godsend, similar to more than 100 DPS. But, this EMP is only up every 800 seconds, making the -regen arguably not worthwhile. As a Hold its nice, but still short and it keeps you from recovering End for quite some time. So: Close, but no Donut.
Flame Mastery
Okay, Fire again. If this is anything like the primaries or secondaries, it will do damage, right? So lets see.
Actually, Flame Mastery does not do much damage at all but still complements the fire sets very well.
The Bonfire is a strong Knockback power which serves as team protection or blockage facing adds.
Char is a single target Hold with good duration and moderate damage. Allowing better soloing for sets with little control.
The Fire Shield is a resistance based shield that offers decent resistance to S/L and Fire/Cold damage.
Rise of the Phoenix finally is the power for the Fire/Fire/Fire Blaster. Its a self-rezz. A beautiful one, too. After going down it allows you to rise from the ashes with 50% Health and Endurance, rendering briefly invulnerable. With Defiance, 50% Health is often better than 100% for a Blaster. i.e. you will reemerge after defeat hosting a significant damage bonus to your attacks. Plus the animation is among the best in the game.
Summing up: nice knockback trickery with bonfire, a good hold, a mediocre shield and a beautiful self-rezz. Fire sounds good!
Force Mastery
The in a former life I used to be a tank set. Very versatile, offering great protection and little control.
Personal Forcefield is a Panic Button just like Hibernate. But in Contrast to Hibernate, this one is not impenetrable but on the other hand allows you to move and recharges more quickly. PFF has 52,5% Defense and 28% ResAll (except Toxic) so basically this one will take you out of normal battles, AVs or PvP Blasters might laugh mildly before smiting you. Please do note that this IS a toggle and a Hold or something along those lines will bring it down. Still a very interesting and good power.
Repulsion Field is an interesting Power. It costs a lot of endurance and knocks foes back at an additional End Cost per enemy. Might have situational uses e.g. for PvP but sounds rather unspectacular.
Temp. Invulnerability is your everyday Toggle-S/L-Resistance-Shield. Nothing special, but good.
Force of Nature. Whoohoo Who da tank? This Click-Power is similar to Invul-Tanks 32 power (only similar) and provides massive Resistance against everything but Psi.
o Are you a tank now?
Short Answer: No. Dont even think about it.
Well, this gives 55% ResAll (except Psi) fully slotted. The tanks version gives you 90% ResAll (except Psi). With different Base HP a 1.000 point damage attack (thats anything except Psi)
- Will consume ~38% of a Blasters HP instead of the deadly 83%. Thus, you die after the third, not the second hit.
- Will consume ~5% of a Tanks HP instead respectable 52%.
o Well, if you combine it with Temp. Invul. You will reach the blaster resistance cap of 75% for S/L damage.
o As this is a Click-Power, it will not be detoggled like PFF. But still due to a lack of Hold Protection, if used unwisely, enemies will just hold your sorry behind until it runs out.
o And Force of Nature crashes after two minutes. It goes down and takes all of your Endurance with it.
Munitions Mastery
This is once again an assault rifle set. If you have picked a primary that is not Assault Rifle, your character will draw one nonetheless. Once again, with the long draw time. If you are a Archery/xxx/Munitions Blaster, your draw times will be horrid.
On the other hand, it works rather well with AR/xxx/Mun. (Well, Captain Obvious to the rescue )
The first Power is Body Armor as a shield and depending on you point of view it will either be vastly superior or underpowered compared to the other shields. Its always on, costs no endurance and provides little resistance (ca. 10%).
So it wont do much for you survivability. But: The other powers (even Force of Nature) dont really turn you into a tank.
Its always on and cant be detoggled. Thats nice, especially when using Inventions in it: You can use: Aegis, Impervious Skin and Steadfast Protection and you get 27,5% MezResist and a Mag 4 Knockback Protection always, with no fear of being detoggled.
Also, as it does not cost any end, the more offensive minded blasters might like this: I need my end to do DAMAGE, not for shields
Cryo Freeze Ray is a pretty good hold, but once again with the looong redraw animation.
The sleep grenade is one of those powers that really get me complaining. Not because the power itself is bad. It causes a good duration sleep and minor knockback (once again, with the redraw animation).
No, its the concept that bugs me: You launch a freakin tactical grenade at enemies, that knocks some of them around and sets them asleep? Thats just weird.
LRM Rocket a power that costs a lot of endurance, has a long cast and recharge time and can be interrupted. Probably not a big deal, right?
Well, I reeeaaaly like the idea to just launch a rocket at a group of enemies. Think of it as a second and weaker Boom. With Slotting, Aim and Build Up this really packs a punch, too. And it doesnt leave you drained of endurance.
Sadly, due to the long setup time, it can happen, that someone scatters the enemies before you have the launch preparation done.
Well, so much for the blaster. The offensive Juggernaut of CoH. Please stay tuned for other guides to come. Presumably next:
Controllers the unkown creatures.
Or: What the hell does a controller do?
[This relates to the fact that if you invite an unknown controller to your team you never know what you are going to get.]