The First Two vs Health, CJ, and Acrobatics

I've said and thought with the new Defiance we should take the first two powers for when we're slept or held.

Regarding Sleep, Health will get rid of half of the duration. And which enemies will try to sleep me beyond the 20s anyway? I think CoT and The Lost are the ones I recall sleeping me. [Though I mostly play scrappers who have a toggle against that.]

For Holds, since I am taking CJ and SJ on my primary blaster, if I take Acrobatics which protects me from Mag 2, which I'm not sure, but I recall most holds are Mag 1 from enemies, and if it's higher it still cuts the Hold time in half.

And while Immob wouldn't really mess with us so we could only use the first two, it is a mez mitigation so I thought I'd mention it. That's gone with CJ.

These mitigation tools are free or nearly free with the exception of Acro.

So...can I skip Flares and Fire Blast? Is that a bad idea? I never use them.

If you don't plan on sk'ing down to 10 or below then you should be ok.

Mind you I don't think cj will help much it is very low defense unless you slot some good sets but the best mitigation is killing quickly which you should be able to do at those levels.

I just mean Cj's mitigation as far as immob protection. I never slot def, just Kismet +6, Winter -slow, and Steadfast -kb. If I got a LotG7.5, I guess I'd ditch the slow.

So, nothing at higher levels casts sleeps?

Off the top of my head, there's a Rikti sleep/hold combo. There's a Freak lieut with a sleep. And one of the Crey armor suits may have a sleep in it. I'm not sure because if there is, they wake you up fast and unpleasantly.

With decent recharge you can skip flares. If you have an immob that does damage you can also use that when mezzed.

On my fire/elec I skipped flares, with 90% global recharge from sets I can spam fire blast non-stop.

If you have the Entropic Chaos procs in your tier 1 and 2, you can fire them while you are asleep and if they proc it will break the sleep.

You can't skip both. Both are good attacks. I prefer Flares because the fast recharge is valuable when faced with slows and the faster cast allows me more options.

Crey Eliminators fire sleep grenades
Devouring Earth fungoids use sleep spores, both PBAoE and ranged AoE
Carnie Illusionist's Blind has a sleep effect built in (but also Holds, so only relevant to FF and Sonic Defenders and the like)
Fortunata bosses use Will Domination I think

Playing my FF Defender like a tank back when sleep turned off all toggles made me quite aware how much sleep there is in the game.

I believe Acrobatics protects against a single hold from most "normal" mobs, but not always from "controller" type mobs like mentalists... they either have a higher base magnitude or they have a chance for an additional +1 magnitude like Controllers. I'm not 100% sure on that but I think it's true.

More importantly, nothing protects from stun. There are a lot of very annoying stuns at high levels... particularly from Malta (insanely long duration stuns at that) but also from others. They're most common in melee but some are ranged. Also, some of the mentalist type mobs have both a sleep and a hold... does sleep de-toggle Acrobatics now? Either way, unless you have a very tight high recharge build I'd take both Flares and Fire Blast. You'll probably want Flares anyway as a filler since it has longer range and better DPA than your immobilize.

If you never use Flares and Fire Blast, you either don't solo much (and therefore just spam AoEs) or like to use melee. In the case of not soloing, you can skip all sorts of powers since you won't really need single target DPS (though it helps on AVs) but if you like blapping you are going to be stunned a lot so you'll want attacks you can use while staggering around. Especially if you fight Malta.

I team exclusively. My chain, after someone has grabbed alpha, is shiver+BU+Aim+RoF+Fireball+breath+...uh, the 40 foot powerful one..+Fireblast+whatever's up.

Generally, I only solo a toon if I'm trying to get my cape or a customized weapon, as no one really wants to tag along for those.

YMMV, but personally I would never skip either of the first two blasts in any set. I find they dish out surprising and constant amounts of damage throughout my blaster's career. Fire Blast, specifically, cycles Flares-Fireblast-Flares-Blaze in an unbroken, AV-incinerating inferno.