VETS!! ASSEMBLE... i need help ;p

hey all. So you might have seen my other posts on here. asking about various blaster AT's. Im very indecisive, i over think things, and i change my mind alot ha! but rather that then have a 50 i don even like right?! so on to the help....

Ok, for concept reasons the primary i want is fire (altho i wouldnt mind some insight on fire, an some advice on how to play it. maybe some tips on how it fairs in the blaster world) But i cant decide on my secondary. The toons name is Dr-Scorch. The background is vague right now but something about him researching nuke like material. accident. blah blah blah..

so for my secondary i thought three choices fit in best with that. Fire/fire obviously. Fire/energy manipulation wouldnt be bad. and finally fire/dev an i can jus throw a utility belt on him ha! (batman style!)

SO sorry for all the text, vets plz give advice. P.S. my playstyle is i like to solo ALOT but i would lik to be effective on a team. pvp doesnt interest me.... THANKS!

Fire/Devices is going to give you the most safety with the lowest damage out put of the 3 choices.

Fire/Fire is going to give you the least safety with the highest damage output of the 3 choices.

Fire/Energy is going to be in the middle of the other two and of the 3 choices is the best one as far as utility goes. It's the best all around choice since you will probably find that Fire/Dev is too slow, and Fire/Fire is too squishy.

If you want to solo, I'd suggest either /em or /dev. /dev might be the safer of the two for soloing if you can stand to take your time doing it, and fire/dev isn't a bad team performer either. /dev offers some very good powers in terms of mitigation. You can make yourself stealthy, you can use web grenade to immobilize, and you can use caltrops to slow and scatter. /dev also offers mines that take some time to set up, but with patience, a /dev blaster can lay a good-sized minefield to pull mobs onto. The mines also do good damage. They also recently changed the final power so that auto-turret now hovers along with you rather than being stationary making it a decent power to have.

/EM offers an array of hard-hitting melee powers that have a chance of also stunning the target. It also offers some very nice utility powers in the form of boost range, conserve power, and power boost; these can modify your powers to do more than they normally would or stretch you endurance so that you can fight for pro-longed periods in the case of power boost. A fire/em also has both BU and AIM with which to up the damage of their alpha strikes to help them melt most of the competition without fear of much reprisal (/dev sacrifices BU). The /em will require you to take a much more active role in your own defense though.

/fire offers little in the way of mitigation making it a poor choice for soloing. It's not impossible to solo with it; it's just more difficult without the usual secondary mitigation tools. /fire also has a number of arguably bad powers that you don't need. This can be good if you want to explore the power pools or bad if you want to rely equally on primary and secondary.

Fire primary is one of the better primaries in terms of AoE damage. It hits hard and it's secondary effect is DoT, so it keeps burning. The biggest issue I see with fire is that it can have a steep learning curve for complete newbies who tend to throw AoEs first and kill later if at all. Fire always draws a lot of aggro because of the AoEs even when you have a good tanker holding aggro. If you're not prepared to be able to handle the aggro you draw, it can make fire a frustrating primary. However, fireball + firebreath will significantly damage most things once they're slotted up especially if you use AIM and BU to boost them. If you take /dev for your secondary, you could also make some use of Rain of Fire which is a postional rain power. It does good damage once it's slotted up, but since things will automatically try to run out of it, you seldom get the full money's worth out of it unless you have some means of keeping things inside it - caltrops would help you there. The basic blasts are single target and animate fairly quickly, and Blaze is a must because even though it's short range, it delivers heavy single target damage. Fireball + Firebreath + Blaze will usually finish off most bosses. The snipe power is another one like Rain of Fire - you can take it or not, but it won't break your build either way.

If you do choose fire/devices don't get caught up in the trap of assuming that you need to lay huge fields of mines out all the time - I used to do this with my archery/dev blaster before I realized that against most opponents 1 trip mine, generally at my feet, was the best bet. You stealth in range of your cones, plant a trip mine, throw a caltrop field at your feet, hit aim and unleash your AE attacks. That generally kills all the minions and when the LT's or bosses close with you the trip mine blows them back before then can get more than 1 melee attack off - if they even get close enough due to the caltrops field.

Alternatively if you have full stealth (cloaking device + SS, the stealth power or a stealth IO) you can toe bomb smaller groups by planting a trip mine right at their feet then backing up and firing off your other AE attacks - works best with small groups of minions that are tightly packed.

Pretty much the only time I lay more than 1 trip mine is high level bosses (+2 or higher) and EB's.

The nice thing about trip mine is that its a final defense, when planted at your feet, that does good damage AND it gives you a great defiance boost - 26% for 11 seconds, enough to almost make up for not having build up.

Thank u guys for all the advice... however after playin with fire for a couple hours ive decided its not for me... However due to your advice. ive decided to go /dev. As my primary i am thinkin nrg...

so any advice on an nrg/dev build. as far as wat to take. wat to skip... same rules apply. mostly solo wit some team friendly aspects as well

hmmm... im beginin to worry. as i look thru the boards i see nothing on nrg/dev. is there something that sucks about them??

It's not a particularly popular combination is all. Energy is somewhat unpopular since the knockback can cause problems (especially on teams) while Devices is regarded as weak since you're sacrificing pure killing power for survivability. You won't be an ultra fast killing machine but it should be an decent combination for soloing since the knockback in Energy will stack with the mitigation from Devices to keep you safe.

Energy Manipulation has 1 power with knockback.

I have a SG-mate who has an nrg/dev. He says that he likes it in general, but unless you're really careful, you will KB stuff out of the stationary tricks of /dev. But there is a lot of kaboom.

That means you'll have to worry about knocking stuff off your caltrops, away from your trip mines, etc. A good player can compensate for that with a little practice though, and learning to compensate to make the most of your own goodies will also help make you overall slightly more team-friendly because you'll have practice controlling your KB in general.

With /Dev you can use a higher than normal difficulty setting without impacting survivability too harshly. With my Eng/Dev i set a trip field of 7 or 8 mines, enough to flatten most bosses, and with Elite Bosses I usually increase it to around 14 to 16, 1.5 power rotation later and he is dead before he can recover from all the KB.

UPDATE!!

Ok since my post my nrg/dev is now 23. Dr-Nova!! Can anyone give me sum tips on what to take an skip from both pools. as well as wat power pools i should take? i already have fitness (sprint, health,stamina) and fly (ive been hoverin over the mobs in teams to tone down the KB).

any advice would be appreciated! an thx for everything so far..

Hey guys, heres a list of powers ive decided to take as of now. BUT i am by no means an expert. This is my 3rd week playin the game. AND STILL WANT YOUR OPINION! thx...

NRG/
1. Power Bolt
2. Power Blast
3. Energy Torrent
4. Power Burst
5. Sniper Blast
6. Aim
7. Explosive Blast
8. Nova

I took all of them except power push (didnt seem appealing) because i like alot of attacks for any situation. an they all seemed fun..

/Dev
1. Web Grenade
2. Caltrops
3. Targeting Drone
4. Smoke Grenade
5. Cloaking Device
6. Trip Mine
7. Time Bomb
8. Auto-Turret

Well, took most of these as well cuz look at the utility! Smoke Grenade+Cloak+Time Bomb+trail-o-trip-mine+me=DEATHFORTHEM. Plus caltrops are nice to have, and the drone helps wit acc. an the auto-turret...well. its nice.

POWER POOLS

Flight- Hover (i like it in teams to hover over the mob, turning my annoying KB into KD!)
Fitness- Sprint,Health,Stamina (sprint helps my hover, an health an stamina... Obvious)
Speed- Hasten, SS (hasten to help when settin down trip mines, an SS for travel plus helps my cloaking device)
Munitions- Body Armor (only APP that interested me, plus this power could help)

SPECULATION

I got one power slot left i was thinkin Either Teleport Foe ( i like the idea of teleporting a boss into a pile of trip mines) However this may be strategic overkill considering i can achieve the same result wit the smoke bomb, cloaking, time bomb, trip mine combo. SO the alternitive would be Combat Jumping, it can help my mobility in SS and adds DEF. so let me kno plz..

THANK YOU TO ANYONE WHO ACTUALLY READ ALL THIS AN PLZ VOCALIZE YOUR EXPERT OPINIONS!!

hey guys, is there anyway to delete threads? this one is beginin to die. an started off basically about fire/fire. so im gonna make a new thread about nrg/dev. since i cant find any threads based off that..

so any responses take their plz