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Sonic/Ice is the best combination for soloing. It gives both excellent damage and excellent mitigation and it allows you to stack sleeps on an entire spawn (including multi boss spawns) giving you the time and freedom needed to survive and win.
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Originally Posted by Celestial_Lord
Sonic Attack / Energy Melee or Sonic Attack / Mental Manipulation - which would be better for soloing?
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-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
-I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
-When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. - Thomas Jefferson
I'm going to counter with Energy Melee because it stacks stuns with Screech. Sleeps are the only thing that stacks with Ice and when you attack, that does you no good. Sleep the spawn with Siren's, stun the Lieut and take them out at your leisure. Sure Ice can hold the Lt too. If it's a boss though, that hold does you no good until it recharges but you can stun him quickly with EM.
Global = Hedgefund (or some derivation thereof)
While sonic/energy may be able to stack stuns thats only going to take out a single target and will require 2 hits to do it, niether very fast attacks (1.5s for screech and either 1.8 seconds for stun or 3.3 seconds for total focus). So yes, if you are willing to get into melee range of a boss for at least 1.8 seconds (doing NO damage) or 3.3 seconds for TF you can stack stuns. There is very little other mitigation in /energy.
Ice on the other hand is just purely defensive. Ice patch is awesome for keeping things out of melee - put it up just before the fight (for a very nice 22% defiance boost) and attack from behind it. Shiver is an incredibly large cone slow that floors an enemies movement speed, reduces their recharge considerably and is up every fight with no slotting. Chilling embrace is a nice melee slow field, although I find it get's toggled off way to often, so YMMV.
If you are looking for a purely defensive secondary I would suggest ice. However, mental manipulation will fill in the AE holes in sonic nicely with psychic scream and being able to sleep a group with siren's makes using drain psyche easy, a problem I had when I tried a fire/mental (I would go in to use drain psyche - then die from the alpha+beta strike due to losing the extra 'edge' you get from opening with an attack before aggro). While not as defensive being able to leverage Drain psyche for the regen in it gives you a huge boost, even without the extra end recovery you get from it.
So, if you want to be very defensive take ice - if you want to fill in the AE gap and live a little more on the edge, go with mental manipulation. Both will probably work well solo.
Globals: @Midnight Mystique/@Magik13
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Taking Fire, Electric, or Munitions for an epic gives you a second hold to stack on bosses. (Mine is Sonic/Ice/Fire). The key point is that Sonic/Ice allows you to handle multi-Boss spawns, Sonic/Energy and Sonic/MM do not. Even prior to the epic /Ice gives you slows in Chill Blain and Shiver and you can use Ice patch as well. Using those 3 tools and kiting with Freezing Touch until you have it double stacked still make handling a single boss easy mode.|
Originally Posted by Deacon_NA
I'm going to counter with Energy Melee because it stacks stuns with Screech. Sleeps are the only thing that stacks with Ice and when you attack, that does you no good. Sleep the spawn with Siren's, stun the Lieut and take them out at your leisure. Sure Ice can hold the Lt too. If it's a boss though, that hold does you no good until it recharges but you can stun him quickly with EM.
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Edit:
@EricHough
With enough +rech you can seemlessly chain Howl/Shockwave/Sirens/and Shiver. It's not a high damage AoE chain but it is an insanely safe one (for a blaster anyway). The electric Epic fills all the bills though, as it gives you an extra cone, an extra Hold, and the ability to stack a mag 6 AoE stun with EM Pulse and Dreadful Wail.
-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
-I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
-When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. - Thomas Jefferson
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Good point on the epic - I tend to not take them into account because I get bored with characters by the high 30's, if I even get them that far. I also try to pick characters that maintain about the same playability level all along their career, so waiting until 40+ for extra AE or until I can slot a ton of +rech sets is not something I plan on. |
Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
With enough +rech you can seemlessly chain Howl/Shockwave/Sirens/and Shiver. It's not a high damage AoE chain but it is an insanely safe one (for a blaster anyway). The electric Epic fills all the bills though, as it gives you an extra cone, an extra Hold, and the ability to stack a mag 6 AoE stun with EM Pulse and Dreadful Wail.
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I went with a sonic/mm on one of my blasters because I was trying to find a primary that could leverage drain psyche a little more safely, approaching it from the other direction. Still haven't figured out how well that will work - got distracted in the low 20's.
I do agree that cold is probably the safest soloing secondary, although I would tend to award it a tie with devices - I think devices is little safer but the extra damage from build up makes up for a lot.
Globals: @Midnight Mystique/@Magik13
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Actually, I'd have to say that devices is quite a bit safer (it's possible to wipe out an entire spawn and not even be in line of sight) but the trade off to get that amount of safety is, for most players, a grossly unacceptable amount of animation/recharge/set up time.
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Originally Posted by EricHough
Good point on the epic - I tend to not take them into account because I get bored with characters by the high 30's, if I even get them that far. I also try to pick characters that maintain about the same playability level all along their career, so waiting until 40+ for extra AE or until I can slot a ton of +rech sets is not something I plan on.
I went with a sonic/mm on one of my blasters because I was trying to find a primary that could leverage drain psyche a little more safely, approaching it from the other direction. Still haven't figured out how well that will work - got distracted in the low 20's. I do agree that cold is probably the safest soloing secondary, although I would tend to award it a tie with devices - I think devices is little safer but the extra damage from build up makes up for a lot. |
-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
-I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
-When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. - Thomas Jefferson
Sonic Attack / Energy Melee or Sonic Attack / Mental Manipulation - which would be better for soloing?
@Celestial Lord and @Celestial Lord Too