Some general information from playing my Rad/Fire/Mace.
First is with Oblit in Hot Feet and all the other end chugging toggle powers you'll have endurance problems even with Cardiac. You need a Numina's +/+ in Health and you should probably switch Hot Feet to a Multi-strike set. (provides some S/L defense and has much better endurance reduction.)
You'll need Consume up more often than it is and you'll want it to be more accurate. The good news is it doesn't need more end mod. You can put your Oblit set here and be just fine.
You'll be unhappy with Fire Sword with out a little more accuracy. I would add a HO nuc to it.
Without any slow in Hot Feet (or an AoE Immob like you get with the PPPs) the mobs will run out of your Burn patch. Burn doesn't have avoid in it any more but Hot Feet still does. The 2 powers will work at cross purposes and you won't get the most out of Burn.
You won't use Neutron Bomb much for 2 reasons. Opening with it (because it has a long animation) will spread out the mobs and make the rest of your PBAoEs less useful. If you use it at the end of your attack chain you'll waste endurance because you'll only have a couple of burning Lieutenants and a Boss left. I replaced this power with Combustion and went all PBAoE and was much happier. (The good news here is that Combustion lets you slot another Oblit or Multi-strike set)
With all the PBAoE damage you are kicking out you won't use your single target attacks much except to finish off running Lieutenants as they exit Hot Feet or when all you have left is a Boss. There are 2 schools of thought to this. You can sneak some slots from your single target attacks and slot Cosmic Burst for Stun (to use on mezzers) and then just take bosses along with you to the next spawn or you can slot them up and use them to finish off bosses before jumping into the next spawn. My preference is the former since none of the single target ranged damage sets provide you with any S/L defense.
You don't "really" need a lot of recharge with a Rad/Fire (I found Hasten by itself to be enough) as the first itteration of your attack chain will leave little behind. The more recharge you have the faster you'll burn up your endurance and you'll find that to be the build's limitation rather than raw damage output.
Inspirations will fall like a monsoon. With soft capped defenses you'll need very few for survival purposes and you'll be able to combine them into reds. With the speed that you defeat things you'll be able to have several reds running consecutively and should be able to hit the blaster damage cap with Aim and Build up frequently.
-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
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Quote:
^^^^^ This guy, right here, I second his advice, He knows his stuff about slotting blasters! I took his advice for my DP/Fire blaster and he an AoE monster with GREAT defenses. ! |
Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
Some general information from playing my Rad/Fire/Mace.
First is with Oblit in Hot Feet and all the other end chugging toggle powers you'll have endurance problems even with Cardiac. You need a Numina's +/+ in Health and you should probably switch Hot Feet to a Multi-strike set. (provides some S/L defense and has much better endurance reduction.) You'll need Consume up more often than it is and you'll want it to be more accurate. The good news is it doesn't need more end mod. You can put your Oblit set here and be just fine. You'll be unhappy with Fire Sword with out a little more accuracy. I would add a HO nuc to it. Without any slow in Hot Feet (or an AoE Immob like you get with the PPPs) the mobs will run out of your Burn patch. Burn doesn't have avoid in it any more but Hot Feet still does. The 2 powers will work at cross purposes and you won't get the most out of Burn. You won't use Neutron Bomb much for 2 reasons. Opening with it (because it has a long animation) will spread out the mobs and make the rest of your PBAoEs less useful. If you use it at the end of your attack chain you'll waste endurance because you'll only have a couple of burning Lieutenants and a Boss left. I replaced this power with Combustion and went all PBAoE and was much happier. (The good news here is that Combustion lets you slot another Oblit or Multi-strike set) With all the PBAoE damage you are kicking out you won't use your single target attacks much except to finish off running Lieutenants as they exit Hot Feet or when all you have left is a Boss. There are 2 schools of thought to this. You can sneak some slots from your single target attacks and slot Cosmic Burst for Stun (to use on mezzers) and then just take bosses along with you to the next spawn or you can slot them up and use them to finish off bosses before jumping into the next spawn. My preference is the former since none of the single target ranged damage sets provide you with any S/L defense. You don't "really" need a lot of recharge with a Rad/Fire (I found Hasten by itself to be enough) as the first itteration of your attack chain will leave little behind. The more recharge you have the faster you'll burn up your endurance and you'll find that to be the build's limitation rather than raw damage output. Inspirations will fall like a monsoon. With soft capped defenses you'll need very few for survival purposes and you'll be able to combine them into reds. With the speed that you defeat things you'll be able to have several reds running consecutively and should be able to hit the blaster damage cap with Aim and Build up frequently. |
take CJ or Stealth over Manuevers
if you take Stealth with the same slotting you'll be at 46%
Personally I would take CJ over the other 2, its more useful. Just slot it with the LotG/rech and use the other 2 slots somewhere else.
ooh, and what Knight said!
perma jump is ---> /up 1
The only reason to take combustion instead of neutron bomb is if you prefer the animation or desperately need a pbaoe set instead of another posi's blast. NB does better dpa than combustion, it animates in slightly more than half the time, and they have the same radius. Combustion is more endurance efficient yet it also takes over ten seconds from the initial activation to do its damage.
Neutron bomb is a conventional taoe that can be just as easily used as a pbaoe by firing it off in conjunction with your other pbaoes. Combustion is some perverse version of hail of bullets that does a third as much damage over twice as much time and doesn't give you any defense during its horse tranquilizer of an animation.
Thank you all for the replies.
RE: Combustion vs Neutron Bomb, I think I'm sticking with the latter. I have experience with Combustion from previous characters and just really hate the power. NB isn't perfect, but its the only ranged AoE this character has.
Unfortunatley due to the expense of this character and how fail PBAoE is in trials, I'm considering shelving this character for the time being. I can do a ranged+recharge build on a more traditional ranged squishy for about 1/3rd the price. I know, I just got done saying how the character suprised me with his effectiveness, but when I got to looking at my finances, I see that I could outfit 3 other characters for what it would take to make this one decently defensive. Maybe I will come back to him if I stumble over several billion influence some day, or just get fickle again. 
Hi folks,
Blasters are new to me. I have lots of experience with Controllers and Dominators but very little with Blasters. For a long time I had pigeonholed Blasters as a very squishy archetype that really couldn't solo much. I guess I was guilty of judging the AT by how it performs around level 20.
Anyway, this is my proposed build for my Radiation/Fire/Fire Blaster, RGBee. The character is a humanoid sized bumble bee with "optical" blast powers. Here's what he looks like when Hasten hands don't assert themselves:
Anyway, I have zero experience with Blaster builds. I know that I want Rise of the Phoenix for sure--its one of my favorite powers. Everything else I'm a little "eh" on. I've constructed an extremely expensive S/L based "goal build" that gets him to around 44.2% SL defense and 50% SL resistance, with backup support of Aid Self (a power I'm aware many people dont like but I tend to feel naked without--I use it as a patch up tool between fights so that I can save greens for when they are really needed).
To get there, I had to make some tradeoffs. What's hard for me to judge is when the tradeoffs are "too much" though. I have no real sense of what a high level Blaster should be capable. Specifically, in the build below Aim and Build Up could recharge somewhat faster, Ring of Fire could be slotted for Damage, and a -resist proc (which I am not, in honesty, that impressed by [edit: but maybe should be]) could be snuck in somewhere. I also seriously doubt I will ever bother actually getting the PVP defense IO. I have other builds that also sit at around 41% defense, awaiting the fantasy PVP IO, and they seem to do okay though.
BTW this build definitely assumes I'm using Cardiacs to control endurance usage.
Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.942
http://www.cohplanner.com/
Click this DataLink to open the build!
RGBee Ranged: Level 50 Magic Blaster
Primary Power Set: Radiation Blast
Secondary Power Set: Fire Manipulation
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Medicine
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Flame Mastery
Hero Profile:
Level 1: X-Ray Beam -- Decim-Acc/Dmg(A), Decim-Dmg/EndRdx(3), Decim-Dmg/Rchg(7), Decim-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(9), Decim-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(9)
Level 1: Ring of Fire -- Enf'dOp-Acc/Rchg(A), Enf'dOp-EndRdx/Immob(11), Enf'dOp-Acc/EndRdx(27), Enf'dOp-Immob/Rng(29), Enf'dOp-Acc/Immob/Rchg(31), Enf'dOp-Acc/Immob(31)
Level 2: Irradiate -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(3), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(5), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(5), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(7), Oblit-%Dam(27)
Level 4: Neutrino Bolt -- HO:Nucle(A), Dmg-I(43)
Level 6: Fire Sword -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(13), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(13), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15)
Level 8: Aim -- Rec'dRet-Pcptn(A), Rec'dRet-ToHit/Rchg(23), RechRdx-I(31)
Level 10: Fire Sword Circle -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(11), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(17), Oblit-%Dam(17), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(25), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(25)
Level 12: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(34), RechRdx-I(43)
Level 14: Super Speed -- Zephyr-ResKB(A)
Level 16: Build Up -- Rec'dRet-ToHit(A), Rec'dRet-ToHit/Rchg(29), RechRdx-I(36)
Level 18: Cosmic Burst -- Decim-Acc/Dmg(A), Decim-Dmg/EndRdx(19), Decim-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(19), Decim-Dmg/Rchg(21), Decim-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(21), Amaze-Stun(23)
Level 20: Aid Other -- Heal-I(A)
Level 22: Aid Self -- Heal-I(A)
Level 24: Boxing -- KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(A), KntkC'bat-Knock%(33), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(34), KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(46)
Level 26: Neutron Bomb -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(33), Posi-Dam%(40), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(42), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(43)
Level 28: Consume -- Efficacy-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(A)
Level 30: Tough -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(48), RctvArm-ResDam(48), RctvArm-EndRdx(48), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(50)
Level 32: Weave -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), DefBuff-I(33), HO:Cyto(45)
Level 35: Burn -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(36), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(37), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(37), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(42), Oblit-%Dam(42)
Level 38: Hot Feet -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(39), Oblit-%Dam(39), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(39), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(40), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(40)
Level 41: Bonfire -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 44: Fire Shield -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(A), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(45), RctvArm-ResDam(45), RctvArm-EndRdx(46), GA-3defTpProc(46)
Level 47: Rise of the Phoenix -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 49: Maneuvers -- HO:Cyto(A), LkGmblr-Rchg+(50), DefBuff-I(50)
Level 50: Cardiac Core Paragon
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(34), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(36), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(37)
Level 1: Defiance
Level 1: Sprint -- Clrty-Stlth(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Health -- Mrcl-Rcvry+(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(15)