For blasters, I love Force Mastery, ESPECIALLY when paired with /Energy. Both of my High Level blasters use the best 'oh shi-!' button available: Personal Force Field, Power Boost, Aid Self. Nice big heal while not getting hit, sounds good to me. Not to mention a toggle resist buff and Force Of Nature, in case you wanna godmode and still fight back.
Munitions isnt bad if just for Surveillance and a Resistance buff that doesnt cost endurance to use.
Elec isn't bad, but I tend to prefer it when my primary doesnt have too many reliable AoEs (like energy blast or Psi Blast).
I'd only recommend Ice for Hibernation, snow storm isnt bad, but everything is dead from Rain Of Arrows before it matters.
I just plain don't like fire.
@Mazzo Grave
Webmaster Grave, Virtueverse!
Energy/Energy Blaster Guide
Quote:
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Originally Posted by BackAlleyBrawler
you *******!!!!
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As the voice of opposition, I'll say that my Arch/EM has gone with the //Fire epic since he reached the 40s two years ago, and has never had second thoughts about it.
(TL;DR at bottom)
Char, if you have the interest and slots to take a hold from your epic, is statistically superior in pretty much every way to Shocking Bolt and Cryo Freeze Ray - more damage, shorter activation, higher inherent accuracy, longer duration, same recharge. When I say it has more damage, I mean that Char does somewhere between Snap and Aimed Shot's damage, in addition to packing one of the best ST holds around. Bonfire, if you don't have the slots to invest in Char, is a one-slot wonder that lets you blockade a hallway, stay clear out of melee (very handy against Cimerorans and similar baddies), stop the repairmen in the STF from healing the tower, etc. Fire shield is slightly less useful than Charged Armor from //Elec, since Fire is less common than Energy, but close enough, and any of the epic resist toggles are no-brainer awesome picks. Melt Armor is a tragic waste, since although debuffs are awesome, it is so minor as to be nearly un-noticeable (-8.45% res, -4.9 def) considering the 200s cooldown and only 10' radius. If you want a debuff that badly, I would prefer Surveillance; it at least has reasonable debuff values (-14% def/res), lets you monitor their stats, and can be made permanent on one target with just 30 extra rech from SB/sets/Hasten/AM on top of normal rech slotting.
Rise of the Phoenix, however, is (imo) the single best power in any epic pool a Blaster (or most other ATs) can access. Most players would prefer a power that prevents death in the first place like Force of Nature or Hibernate, believing that taking powers that are only useful after you die means you are planning to die, but hear me out. As a blaster, your primary function on a team (or solo) is to defeat as many enemies as possible, as fast as is possible. Apologies if this seems obvious, but it carries an important correlary; if you are holding back from your full damage potential due to worrying about your personal safety, or because you already faceplanted, you are not dishing out as much damage as you could otherwise. At the level that the top-tier epic power opens, death has a nearly meaningless impact beyond temporarily impairing your damage output. Once you hit 50, debt has literally zero effect on your character other than allowing you to earn the other debt badges; it doesn't affect your influence, salvage, or recipe drops at all. The only actual problem dying poses is that it shuts off whatever buffs you may have running on you, and takes you out of the fight for as long as it takes for you to either safely pop an awaken and recover from the effects, run back from the hospital, or get a rez from some teammate. With Rise of the Phoenix, however, you can use your death as just another weapon - it is no longer a hindrance but an excuse to unleash a boss-level stun/nuke on anything nearby, and for any teammate that has it to use Vengeance and/or Fallout to speed the team's progress up even more. While PFF/Aidself or Hibernate will allow you to prevent death in most circumstances if you can react fast enough, they shut you out of the fight for several seconds just like death would. With RotP under your belt, you can continue to battle as aggressively as possible without fear of death, and when you do eventually fall, you can rise from the ashes and finish the job in less than two seconds. You need not fear crippling end-drains, mezzes, or debuffs (like Mask of Vitiation), as you can use RotP to break any debuffs or mezzes and start the battle fresh with a big chunk of hp/end. Additionally, if you are fully capable of dealing with your death without any intervention from the def/cons on the team, it lets them conserve their rezzes for another squishy that does not have a self-rez and require less effort/stress towards keeping you upright rather than blasting away or tending to someone else near death's door.
This favor for blasting away with minimal concern for personal safety inspired largely by RotP's ability to bounce back instantly from any misjudged encounter does not mean that that I (or a likeminded blaster) am incapable of surviving what I pick off, or chronically over-aggroing, or playing "Stupid Blaster Tricks" on a regular basis, or generally noobish incompetence. Rather, it means that when you are engaged in a situation that you should be able to handle, but things start to turn south unexpectedly, you do not need to freak out and run, but rather pop some insps as may be needed and just fight all the fiercer. If the RNG likes you, it may mean winning a fight that looked like it was going sour, because you saw it through, or it may mean that you get to pop RotP and fry them all that way, or worst case scenario (you got in WAY over your head through some ambushes or whatever jumping you), RotP will give you a window of invincibility (and stun/knockback) to make a run for it and regroup.
Bottom line is, even if you have capped HP, softcapped defenses, and significant +res, sooner or later you will end up cooked; an AV gets a lucky shot in, or two Arachnos bosses landed simultaneous Executioners' Strikes, or you didn't expect that ambush wave would spawn on you, or the defender got mezzed and all his toggle debuffs dropped while you got all the aggro, or whatever. However infrequently that happens (based on how far you push the envelope), //Fire gives you the tool to deal with it cleanly and swiftly, without hassling your teammates.
Edit: Wow, that was ramblier than I expected, but I suppose I should put in an evaluation of the other pools as well.
Munitions probably offers the least to you, as an Archer. LRM (a second nuke) is the main reason people would lean in this direction, but with RoA, you already have a ranged nuke to open every battle with. Cryo Freeze Ray is inferior to both Shocking Bolt and Char in every way except looks (stick with Stunning Shot if you want ranged mez), the new rules where being mezzed does not deactivate defensive toggles removes most of the edge Body Armor had over the toggle armors, and Sleep Grenade is pretty much pointless except as a cheap set mule for Fortunata Hypnosis. Surveillance is pretty nice, and my Bane loves it, but Surveillance alone is probably not enough to justify losing one of the other pools' tricks.
Cold mastery is next up on the list of marginal choices. Frozen Armor is the only epic armor that provides defense instead of resistance, if you are one of the people that prefers defense. The catch is that it is Smashing and Lethal defense, instead of positional defense of some form, which would be easier to stack IO bonuses on for most blasters. If you choose to set up an IO build focused on softcapping S/L defense, Frozen Armor will be a big help in that regard, and would be an effective choice. In this case, you would probably want to take many/most of the melee attacks in /EM and load them up with Kinetic Combats for their 3.75% S/L defense bonus. Outside of this strategy though, the lure of Cold Mastery is Hibernate. If you want Hibernate (the ultimate get-out-of-debt free card, with literal untouchability instead of just really good def/res), then go for it. You probably know who you are. The rest of Cold is pretty much irrelevant. Hoarfrost SOUNDS like it would be awesome for a blaster (Hey, Dull Pain!). Don't get suckered into it. It's not. Blasters have an HP cap of 133.33% of base, and accolades can push you up to 120% of base. Set bonuses can push you the rest of the way if you choose, but even without them, Hoarfrost will not increase your max hp by anywhere near as large a percentage as it would on a tank/scrapper/brute, rendering it little more than a solid self-heal with 9 minute base cooldown. Snowstorm could be nice as an AoE slow, but as an Archer who specializes in AoE carnage, the AoE nature of the slow will likely not be as important (most of the enemies will be dead within seconds of contact) and you will have to choose your debuff anchor carefully. It's a solid power if you don't have a teammate to manage the crowd control though.
Force Mastery is one of the most popular epics, and with reason - it's easily the most defensively oriented, with not only a regular resistance toggle but an Unstoppable-lite and Personal Forcefield. If you want to stay upright, it's hard to beat Force Mastery. If you took Aid Self and/or Power Boost, this pool will be especially attractive since PFF gives you all the time you need to patch yourself back up, rather than getting hammered on as fast as you can heal. Force of Nature lets you pretend that you're a tanker (or at least a scrapper) and be a darned tough fighter for 2 minutes out of every 7 or so (depending on global recharge), and only crashes your endurance at the end, not your hp. Few blasters (or anyone else) take Repulsion Field, but it can serve as an effective substitute for conventional crowd control if you just need everything to sit down for a few moments or the level geometry provides a corner for you to chain-KD otherwise dangerous bosses into. The catch to Repulsion Field is its prohibitive endurance drain coupled with a long (40s) cooldown that prevents you from toggling it on and off whenever you need it. The general downside to Force Mastery, that it was purely defensive, was remedied in part by the new power, Repulsion Bomb. It's an impressive AoE attack with respectable radius and more damage than Fire Blast, but a slow (3s) activation time that drops it down to slightly less DPA than Explosive, and a painful (45s) cooldown. The primary advantage it conveys is the 100% knockdown, which can give you a momentary breather if the enemies aren't dropping as fast as they should.
Electric Mastery is probably the most versatile of the epics. It offers THE best resistance toggle around, a good hold, and a reasonable extra AoE. Although you don't have another hold to stack with Shocking Bolt, just stuns, Power Boost could up the duration enough to make that less important (if you took Power Boost). It's longer-animating and only half as damaging as Char, without Char's inherent accuracy buff, but it still has a 50% longer duration than Freeze Ray and 20% longer duration than Stunning Shot. Static Discharge is roughly on par with Explosive Arrow; not an exceptional AoE attack but by no means gimpy. It has a slightly shorter and wider cone than Fistful. If you're sitting there between RoA volleys wishing that you could fire more AoE carnage than Fistful and Explosive provide, //Elec will fill that gaping hole in your life, and at nearly 1/4 the recharge of Repulsion Bomb it is rather clearly the better choice there. It may annoy you that it will require bow redraw if you want to insert it into your regular attack chain, though. EMP is not for everyone, considering that it floors your recovery and has a base recharge over 13 minutes, but it is still pretty much the most powerful AoE hold in the game, and the Blaster version is considered a Stun instead of a Hold, so it stacks with Stunning Shot and everything from /EM. Surge of Power is a carbon copy of Force of Nature from //Force in all but looks. I already made the case for RotP, but if you want to stay upright, the choice between //Force and //Elec boils down to whether you place more value in PFF or the hold, energy resistance, third AoE, and maybe EMP.
*looks up page, looks at clock* Huh, one of these days I should just write a guide or something.
TL;DR: Fire has the best hold and a self-rez that lets you take more chances in your gameplay. Very fun addition.
Munitions has very little to offer an archer unless you just are deadset on LRM for whatever reason.
Ice = Hibernate = Rest + Phase Shift. Alternatively, Frozen Armor can set the foundation for a S/L def softcap IO build.
Force has PFF and Unstoppable-lite instead of Hibernate, so you can run around while hiding.
Elec offers probably the most versatile package - best regular third AoE option, serviceable hold, still has Unstoppable-lite.
Rule number six of an empathy defender is NEVER underestimate a blaster's ability to die. I don't care if he has CM, Fort, both RAs, bubbles (both FF and Sonic), and is fighting next to a Storm defender with hurricane on. If there is a way to die in that situation, the blaster will find it.
Wow, that was very informative. I'm probably gonna go with //Fire. I have it on my Ice/fire toon and it is very fun. I just didnt know if any of the other epics would pair better with Archery/EM. Thanks
I'm a Mac user, no Mid's for me
Hello, I am a lvl 39 blaster and I cannot decide what epic powerset I want. Im on a mac and dont have access to Mid's so any help would be greatly appreciated.
I'm a Mac user, no Mid's for me