Whats Wrong with Sonic????

I don't see many blasters with Sonic primary. Those I do only seem to use /Em secondary. There's a couple guides using /Em for secondary(Range Boost), obviously because of the short range of some Sonic attacks, but are there other compelling reasons? I posted a thread asking for build help but didnt seem to get much response so I assume from that there is not much interest in Sonic for blasters. This is an honest question so no flaming please. I will not post again about it.

>_> well....quite honestly nothing is very "wrong" about it.....its just not a very popular theme. Also the sfx that it comes loaded with are some of the most irratating in the game.

Nothing wrong with Sonic, by itself it's a high tier primary in ST damage (right up there with Fire, Psy and Ice) and in a team it becomes a pretty decent force multiplier. It lacks in the AoE department, but if you're good at lining up cones then even with Howl alone you can pull your own weight in a team

There are 2 things that prevent it from being more popular in my opinion:

1) The sound effects.

2) The fact that your sonic attacks come from your forehead rather than your mouth.
You'll notice a similar thing with breath of fire where the fire actually comes from your nose.

How can people not love the sound fx?! Ok I don't love em either, but I never found em annoying or any reason to NOT play the set.

Sonic lacks in the AoE department, for the most part the range on it's powers are too short (hence the reason many people reccomend /energy as a secondary) especially in combination with the animation/rooting times of the powers, the cone widths do not play well with each other, the KB mag on Shockwave is too high (and cone width too narrow) and can/will cause all of the targets to be thrown out of the range of your other cone attacks.

That said I really enjoy my Sonic/Ice/Electric Blaster. He is a pocket controller that can (and has) soloed his way through all most all of the content in the game.

Because shout is so slow. The -res works extremely well with /em and /elecs big hits, but personally I can't play a blaster that doesn't have a decent t3 ranged heavy hitter cause you can't always get in and punch things safely. The damage without shout is ok, but feels lower than it actually is because scream is dot.

If it had a decent t3 it would be my favorite blaster set because of the very high mitigation it has.

A lot of good reasons mentioned above. There's really nothing to attract someone to sonic over anything else. Fire outdoes its AoE and ST DPS, DP is more flashy, etc.

However, I see a LOT of /Sonic Defenders. This is largely due to the obscene -Res debuff in their attacks and the lower importance of outright DPS for Defenders. Also Defenders tend to be focusing upon their Primary, so moving around for the placement of the cones is less of an issue than it is for the "killing everything now" agenda of most Blasters.

Most blasters play to do the AoE killing. Sonic is a set which is about debuffing resistance which makes everyone else do a better job killing. Its a much more popular set among corruptors and defenders because the players attracted to those combos are more inclined to support role than blasters.

Thank you everyone for the input. I greatly appreciate your thoughts.

The sounds are great until you have played a sonic blaster for 25 levels and you can't stand hearing one more OOOweeeEEEEeeeWOOOO just to fire your third ST blast.

Then you delete it because urgh.

I made a Sonic/Mental blaster that made me happy. But, yeah, it feels a little "defenderish" to me even when I'm playing a blaster.

I have 2 reasons for not playing Sonic Blasters. In fact, now that I think about it, sonic is the only Blaster set I haven't played.

1. The sounds. While not being bad starting out, they really... really get tiresome after only one mission. I can't stand playing without sound, as it takes me out of the action. A friend suggested just muting it and playing music but I find that disorienting. I like being able to hear that minion I missed draw his sword from behind me.

2. No matching secondary thematically. While I can generally work around this limitation, even more so now with Power Customization I find Sonic to be one of those that just doesn't fit with the secondaries atm.

For the "blasts from the nose/forehead" and "doesn't match other themes" things, I recoloured mine to be red eye blast things and used the cycloptic robot mask thing.

I wanted an eyeblast set, and I think Sonic looked a bit better than Psi.

I'm going to wade in here to answer the title of this thread and in my opinion: nothing.

Sonic is a decent set which while it might not appeal to the min/maxers out there, is a wonderfully safe effective set that I still play many moons after my Sonic/En hit 50. To counter some of the negative aspects that have been mentioned here (which I do agree with but don't necessarily see as negative) I'll list some of the greatest points about Sonic.

1) It's safe. It has three soft control tools in Shockwave, Siren's Song and Screech. Now the first two of these I would not recommend using in a team but all of them are great solo. Screech is excellent for targetting problem mobs (mostly lieutenants who will mezz but chaps like Sky Raider Engineers, Rikti Comms Officers and others) and taking them out of the fight early. Screech has great duration compared to other mezzes and is wildly effective throughout the game.

2) It's secondary effect allows you to do more damage and as long as you have some good recharge, you can stack the effect several times over. Sure, the debuffs are not as strong as on a Defender but they help. Especially on a team, being able to add a small debuff to a spawn with Howl is a nice help to the team. Howl, bear in mind, is a pretty wide cone too.

3) Sonic is also nicely light on the endurance. I think The Amber Banshee is the only Blaster I've run up to Stamina without gasping for endurance every few fights. These days I have to be seriously Speed Boosted up the wazoo to come even close to draining my endurance bar.

4) Shout is wickedly powerful. Sure its animation time isn't great but when it hits, it hits hard. As I tend to have fired off Scream and Shriek before hitting Shout, it gets the benefit of the -res debuffs and can hit like a Mac truck.

As for the perceived problems, they've never been an issue for me. The range has always been good and as for the origin of the blasts, I think it's more natural for sonic attacks to come from the mouth than from someone's hands surely? In comparison to other Blasters, you may feel slightly underpowered but the set has some excellent components to it that make this less of an issue. For solo powerset, I can't think of one that's safer save perhaps Ice for its holds. On a team, it makes an excellent single target Blaster, especially if you take out problem mobs with Screech and apply Howl to the spawn. You can also consider targetting through a melee AT as well so that their attacks get the benefit of your -Res.

Sonic is not the most powerful set but it is safe and it is fun. If you have a concept that fits it, don't let the percieved problems put you off. It's a solid set, it's just better suited to Defenders and Corruptors but that doesn't mean it's gimped in the slightest. It's just a bit different.

One thing I will say is, if you are bothered by the sounds, give up now. They've never bothered me at all but if they bug you now, they might do after a while.