Blaster Build Help

Hey Guys,

I'm a bit new to City of Heroes, I have a level 33 Ice/Energy Blaster, Magic origin.

I was looking for a bit of advice, Ive been playing with Mids' Hero Designer.

Not sure if I'm doing it right =P

Well, you haven't really given us much to work with...

Do you know how Single-Origin vs. Hamidon-Origin vs. Invention-Origin Enhancements work? Are you looking for a cheap build/expensive build? Would you like the build to cap defense/recharge/damage? How do you like to play your blaster? Are you a ranged lockdown artist with your Ice blasts? Do you get up close with your Energy punches?

Knowing these sort of things will make any suggestions we give you not be as likely to make you hate your blaster, seeing as how we'd be adapting it to your play style and not giving you a basic template build which might not be as enjoyable.

My best advice, honestly, would be to go and PLAY your Blaster. Learn what works best for you, learn what enemies will give you fits and which ones you can steamroll, and team with people to get some experience with other buffing/debuffing/control sets and how they effect you as a "glass cannon". Also, you're about to wade into the level range where Blasters drop off in terms of damage vs. the enemies' increasing HP and newly-gained mezzing abilities... this is where a lot of new Blasters get discouraged. Don't give up hope! I love my Blasters and they're well worth the journey.

You're probably not doing it right, but keep experimenting and post your build for critique.

A really basic way to go about making a build is to first make sure all your basics are covered before worrying about set bonuses. A step by step process would look like this:

1. Pick the right powers at the right time. I believe the Blaster guides have info on all the secondaries and primaries available as well as power pools, listing which are the better powers to pick and when.

2. Make sure you can hit your targets. In Mids, you can set your base chance to hit to simulate attacking +3's which will be the maximum con after you get a rare alpha. To do this, go to Options -> Exemping and Base Values -> set the value in the "Base ToHit" box to 45. Make sure all of your attacks are at least 95% accuracy through accuracy enhancements and set bonuses. Note: the Kismet defense set has a +6% ToHit IO in it, which is well worth the cost and will get you to your accuracy goals much more easily.

3. Make sure you don't run out of endurance easily. As a damage dealer, you do not want to find yourself in a position you can't attack. This is primarily achieved by slotting endurance reduction enhancements in your attacks and toggle powers, and endurance modification enhancements in powers like Stamina. Other things you can do is slot the +recovery IO's from the Performance Shifter EndMod set(in Stamina), Miracle Heal set(in Health), and Numina's Convalescence Heal set(in Health). Those can take a while to obtain, however.

4. Make sure you have enough damage in your attacks. You want to be around the 90% damage enhancement mark for your attacks. To do this you must slot damage enhancements in your attacks.

5. Get recharge in your best Single Target attacks, Area of Effect attacks, and self damage buffs. Your best attacks(especially AoE attacks) need to be up more often, which will make you a more efficient blaster. To get more killing power you must slot recharge into them. Also, your self damage buffs are very important, and you should strive to have around 90% recharge in them. To do this you must slot recharge enhancements and go for global recharge bonuses...

6. Get global recharge bonuses. This is where things get tricky, as IO sets come into play. Invention Origin enhancements have sets which can boost your global values for many things, ranging from extra defense and recovery to extra damage and recharge. The first thing you need to worry about is recharge, so try to get as many of those bonuses in first. Aside from IO's, you can get the Hasten power from the Speed power pool which provides a great boost to your recharge for a moderate period of time. The more global recharge you get, the more effective Hasten will become, giving you a great global recharge boost. A good goal to aim for is making Hasten recharge in close to two minutes, essentially making it "perma"

7. If you happen to get all of the above covered, you can then go for other things from IO sets. Those can be extra defense, extra damage, extra HP, more damage procs in your powers, and more.

It's not immediately obvious but respecs are surprisingly easy to obtain. For example, this week's weekly strike target (more comically, weekly task force) is the level 34-43 respec trial for both heroes and villains. You can run these trials as much as you want, but you can claim up to three respecs while doing so. With new issues, a freespec is also virtually always granted to all characters that don't already have one. In other words, don't be shy about trying different things.

My general new blaster advice would be, and apologies if this is old news to you, to simply make sure you keep your favorite basic attacks well slotted with SOs. Don't go too crazy picking up every available attack to the extent that either you can't properly slot any one of them or you don't have the power picks to do other things. By that I mean heal yourself with aid self, accumulate personal defenses from pool powers like tough, weave or hover, et cetera. By "attacks well slotted with SOs" I mean that any attack you use often should have at least one accuracy and three damage SOs*, and you should try to keep them green or white, i.e. your own level or higher.

Inventions are a staggering boon to performance but going from the weird slotting you sometimes see new players come up with to just a solid SO build is an even bigger leap. If you want to get right into inventing and marketing more power to you, literally, but be aware that for approximately half of the game's life inventions didn't even exist, and most of the content in no way requires their use.

*Corollary: You also don't want to slot more than three of any given type of SO. For example, three damage SOs will give you something like 94% damage enhancement. A fourth damage SO will increase that to around 99%. This is due to "enhancement diversification," or ED, heh, but it can be summed up in the handy mnemonic "More than three? Not for me!"

That's a really interesting combo that I'd really not thought of doing. In addition to that, there are many ways to play that toon also.

I'd need to know what you want, so post a build, even if you think it sucks.

I'm not going to post what I'd do, as only taking build up and boost range would offend some.

Between makos bite IO and Thunderstrike and the standard defense powers you will be able to obtain range defense cap. Add in Hover along with Aid Self and you have a pretty nice self contained toon. Energy secondary really offers a nice spread for IOs choices. I have an Arch Energy which this works well for. Only difference is I use a jet pack and have super speed with a stealth IO slotted.

In cave missions solo I start out in the larger rooms and fly above and fight from that vantage point leverage the range defense. I then work from that area out. This way I always have a high ceiling area to fall back to.

Permahasten. RotP up every 81 seconds. And cheap.

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