Highest AoE Blaster DPS?

25% of the time, it works every time

The fun part of Rad/Mental is watching when people start groaning about CoT.

I LOVE fighting CoT - they just melt. I usually say - just take the Alpha and watch them disappear

In a couple of groups the team is laughing at them

The damage on HoB isn't that variable, really. It kills minions pretty much without fail, and leaves LTs somewhere between
The damage done is variable, but there are so many potential ticks that it winds up being pretty regular.

To the OP: My personal picks for highest-AoE DPS are Fire/MM and Fire/Fire. The latter has better AoE DPS stats, but I don't enjoy soloing with it, so I prefer the Fire/MM.

No other Primary has the same raw DPS as Fire/ for both ST and AoE. /MM and /Fire are the favs for AoE DPS, but /Fire has definite survivability issues unless you're prepared to sacrifice your fire motif with chunky, untintable, ice-blue armour.

Fire is also quick, and blooms early, so it's extremely popular. It's expensive in terms of End though, so plan on putting some EndRed into your attacks.

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Originally Posted by Athanatosis Ah, I see. It's hard to figure out what's true or not when all I've got to go off of are so many varying opinions!

Even with the raw figures, personal builds and play-styles make a huge difference. And there's subjective impression: I'm sure that some people are unable to regard Sonic Blast as a decent set simply because it looks and sounds like an asthmatic 3-year having a temper tantrum.

DP, OTOH, looks flashy and impressive, although it's been pretty heavily criticised for rooting issues and "meh" numbers. (It's fun and I enjoy mine.)

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Originally Posted by Athanatosis Even if I were to master swapping ammo at the right times to maximize damage, DP still wouldn't be up there with Fire or Arch?

Probably not. Although a trick to make swapping ammo easier is to use binds to switch ammo types for particular attacks.

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Originally Posted by Athanatosis I've liked the idea of Fire so far but after reading this thread the idea of a no-crash nuke seems a lot more efficient in terms of fast paced eight man teaming and getting as much AoE out as possible without having to take breaks between spawns. Inferno is awesome and all, but in terms of damage dished out per mission, I think the end crash and subsequent downtime could really hold a player back.

A Fire/Fire can pop a small blue and hit Consume. Fire/MM can build Drain Psyche for Recovery, hit a mob with it, then Inferno, and pop a small blue. In my experience, your toggles will often drop unless you time everything perfectly, but a couple of seconds recovery is a small price to pay for dishing out 1000 points of fire damage and obliterating the ambush that just swarmed the squishies. Or just the sheer joy of burning a mob to the ground before the scrappers reach it

I think of Inferno as FUN! or one hell of a panic button. It's not really a smooth part of your attack chain, but then very few nukes are; I think it's just the "Lethal" trio of DP, AR and Arch.

However, Fire/Fire and Fire/MM pairings don't NEED their Tier 9 to maintain smooth AoE attack chains.

Additionally, for Fire/MMs, Psychic Shockwave is commonly recommended as the "crashless nuke" of the Fire/MM pairing.

Gonna throw in my .02$'s and suggest Fire/Energy. It's what I've played since the start, and Energy is a HUGE boost for Fire's damage. Combined with Fire as a primary, you have Aim AND Build Up, Boost Range, Conserve Power, and Power Boost to increase the damage and effectiveness of your tasty AoE attacks. You get the awesome Power Thrust which helps you keep enemies controlled and at range, and if you don't go a Blapper route you have quite a few power slots open for PP's and your APP. If you DO go Blapper, you have the wonderful Total Focus.

This combo lets you dish out incredible amounts of damage for both AoE and single target, and for farming it's wonderful, though not as mindlessly easy as a Fire/Kin troller.