I love my Fire / Fire blaster and if you want pure damage with extra damage as a secondary you cant go wrong.
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Fire/fire is easily one of my most enjoyable alts
It can get pretty intense at times
Play mine as blapper
If you have plenty of influence, you can soft cap your def and be an aoe killing machine that is far from being squishy against most mobs
Have fun
There really isn't much KB in Energy Melee... I think you are thinking of Energy Blast. You have one ST Melee KB attack from Melee, and that's pretty helpful if someone gets in your face.
Basically, /Fire is mostly more damage, AOE, etc. Energy Melee has a lot of good ST attacks at melee range, but also good mitigation. Fire Blast has pretty good aoe, so /Fire could seem like overkill... or Energy Melee's mitigation can look pretty good. Having build up from level 6 is pretty nice, too... I recall burning through mobs in the Hollows at level 6 because of it.
Still, both have their pros and cons. Go with what sounds good to you.
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Fire/Fire gives you a lot of fast-activating high damage powers. It's what I'd go for given that you're looking for damage.
Energy Manipulation is a nice set. I use it more than any other blaster secondary, and my main is Energy/Energy. Boost Range will perma out of the box with three recharge, but overall I wouldn't build around this unless you wanted to go strictly ranged, which doesn't sound like your intent. The other great utility power in /Energy is Power Boost, but as Fire/ doesn't have secondary effects to boost, this would really only help if you went with the Medicine pool, or to strengthen Personal Force Field, etc.
You could build around the stuns (Stun, Total Focus) as protection for a blapper, but they are both slow to activate, and you need both to stun a boss. Mostly I use /Energy for the utility powers, though if you take a primary with a stun, such as Sonic, you then have enough tools to do effective single-target control.
But given your post, I'd suggest you simply burn them with Fire/Fire. You can never have too much overkill.
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Angel Witch II - Chord of Souls - Storm Witch II - Princess of the Dawn - Standing Horse - Witch of Xymox
Silent Scream - Shadow Witch II - Liquid Serenade - Nebulous Dawn - Ghost Witch II -Xiberia
Yeah, I have a Fire/EM blaster. If you're sweating KB, you can rest easy. Except for the first attack in EM, I think the rest do Disorient, not KB.
I like Fire/EM over Fire/Fire because I tend to play "up in the face." So, when things get a little too real, I have a bunch of punches ready to fire off. Power Thrust, Boxing, Bone Smasher and Total Focus slotted for damage or disorient.
Plus, Hasten+Aim+Buildup....you can fire off well over 2,000 HPs of damage in 10 seconds.
It's basically a question of do you want more AoE (/Fire) or more ST (/EM).
/EM's one KB is an extremely good mitigation tool. With 100% chance for KB on a very short recharge you can keep a boss or other dangerous mob completely locked down til theyre dead, and its just ST so you don't have to worry about scattering mobs and making your team hate you since anything you KB for protection should be dead seconds later.
I have both, and I consider the fire/EM more powerful. Fire already has so much AoE damage, the extra AoE from /fire isn't really needed. But /EM has much more ST damage and control than /fire, which helps a lot. Plus the utility powers in /EM are very useful. Fire breath used with boost range is just on a whole different level than without it.
I went with an NRG/NRG. Fire was my original plan but I had a fire corr., and I thought hell, I'll go with something I haven't done yet. I'm having a frickin' blast though. I'll probably roll a fire/nrg later because the /nrg secondary looks pretty fun to use, build up at level 4 is a big bonus too.
A pure Energy Blaster is fun . . . but learning how to "use" the knockback instead of abuse the knockback is a key to being a good teammate. The Hover-overhead-and-blast-down method is a very effective.
Solo, I let the knockback go wild. It makes the set feel more powerful.
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If you want to dive in and kill huge mobs and nuke things, take /Fire. Consume is a jewel for a nuking blaster even if you barely consider all the other PBAoEs it offers. You'll either munch purples like popcorn or die a lot standing in the middle of those mobs, but so what? That's why Rise of the Phoenix is in the Epic pool.
If you want a more survivable build using hoverblasting and setting for ranged defense, take /En and all your AoEs. Power Thrust will let you solo any EB without sufficient KB protection; Boost Range will let you pull some very silly things (250 foot snipes, anyone?) and it also makes Fire Breath from Okay into Bloody Awesome.
I'm just looking to be able to do some fantastic damage. I was considering NRG but the KB seems like it'd be a pretty damn annoying hassle in teams (And from playing with energy blasters most of them had no idea how to properly utilize it).
I had a fire corr and the damage was fantastic, but I want to see what the blaster can do. While buffing was fun, I was more fixated on the part where I completely melt people.
For secondaries.../Fire seems to just decide, "You know what, lets have some overkill."
Which is great but NRG has some REALLY good support abilities.
...but that damage on Fire/Fire looks amazing.
So can anyone give some input?