Questions on Energy Primary and IO's?

Hello all,

I am returning after a long hiatus, and I was wondering if anyone had an opinion on how to slot an energy primary blaster, who will primary solo?

I was thinking that slotting the Knockback set that provides a proc to recharge could work, although it would be at least 120 million influence, for your normal attack chain since you would need to slot each power. However I may be missing something important for play style perhaps franken slotting could be better and just putting that IO in along with 5 slots of another set?

Please give me any advice or constructive criticism, you have.

If you use the proc, because of the suppresion on it, you should probably only use it in one power, one of your AOE's, either Expolosive Blast or Energy Torrent. I tend to use damage procs, so havent used it myself, but am thinking about it, as my present build is sans Hasten, so I wouldnt mind Torrent and Explosive recharging faster.

I have tried lots of builds, since Nrg/Nrg was my first 50 and favorite character. I have tried extreme distance via Hami O's, Regen and Recharge. I just redid him with softcapped ranged defense and as soon as I finish up my villian arc, he will be soft capped to energy also. I also run Aid Self. I have found this build several magnitutes better than any of my previous. I knew soft capped ranged would be an improvement but didnt expect this level of performance increase. I dont enjoy repeccing much anymore, so it took me a while to decide to do it. The results have been very pleasing, and the cost was pretty reasonable. It cost me 350mil or so and two A merits to do t he build, that was at buy it immediatly prices. Over half of that was on the numina set.

One thing I have been testing is the performance differance of using Aim and Build Up and not using those powers. I was always a big believer in them, but for solo play, Im finding nearly no difference now. They are nice and I wouldnt drop them, but Im amazed that the play doesnt change much without their use.

If you solo on lower player lvls, I think any build will work. I play at 8/0 with bosses on. Nothing earth shattering, but its pretty easy for me at that lvl, so far, regardless of the enemy.

KB is as always great mitigation, but on bosses that cant be knocked down, even the fact they are just knocked back, helps, as the ranged defense then keeps you safe. I just go done fighting a tip mission that spawned an ambush that had 4 crey bosses. Im sure any of my previous builds would have melted under that, this one did fine, and I died with two bosses left when I answered the phone and got careless.

So at this point, its hard for me to reccomend much besides going for softcapping some form of defense, be it S/L or ranged. I think ranged is far superior, as you avoid lots of mezzes.

I'd just go for ranged defense and six-slot Thunderstrikes in all the single-target attacks. Mine is only at about 30% ranged defense, but it's pretty survivable. I went energy/energy/fire so that I could put Bonfire between me and the mobs, which on top of the knockback in the powerset works pretty well. My theory is: Everything On Its *** All The Time, Over There. Mobs waste a *lot* of time getting up and running to try to get in range to hit me.

I could have higher ranged defense, but I put six slots into Aid Self, three each into Power Boost and Boost Range, and I think I put a purple set into Rise of the Phoenix. Not really a powergamer's build, but pretty hard to kill: just duck back behind the bonfire if too much damage comes in, hit Power Boost and Aid Self (a couple interrupts helps, here), and suddenly I'm back in the fight. And if I do die, anything near me will be stunned for a while. It's a fun build and a blast to solo, but won't appeal to everyone.