So, Beam Rifle.

I've been testing Beam Rifle at 40 in Beta. I'm not sure this is a good fit for Blasters -- but as I noted in my post in the official feedback thread, my only other blaster is an Ar/En who can kill all minions in a single attack, so that's kind of an outlier.

The problem is that Blasters have one modus: Kill Them Before They Kill You. And Beam Rifle is extremely focused on setting up combos with single target focused disintegration and disintegration spread.

I can solo at x2, but even with lots of kiting, range play, hopping around, etc. I am frequently taken down to 30-40% health or killed outright. Not sure if this is par for course for "normal" Blasters or not.

Even if I wasn't getting mauled... Blasters can 2-3 shot almost anyone with Beam Rifle. That means once you set up Disintegration, you have little chance of getting Disintegration Spread going on before your target is dead. This'll only get worse in teams.

Finally, although I couldn't test this since nobody was teaming, I'm not sure how well a ranged ST focused set will work when teamed. Once Disintegration Spread values go up it might improve, though.

Any suggestions for how to make a heavily ST focused set work?

Think it will work well with Defender Traps.

I run a Psi/EM PVP build in PVE on occasion. It has zero AOE attacks, but is still useful on teams. I just focus on things that are harder to kill and let the minion-sweepers on the team handle that aspect. Bosses will likely still fall to quickly on a decent team, but Beam Rifle should shine against EBs, AVs and GMs.

This could all depend on what your definition of "level of usefulness on a team" is, what your opinion is of blasters in general, etc. But that's another conversation.

The first thing I remember is that most of this game is level 1-50, as opposed to 50+. Nowadays, any AT post-50 who has invested in defensive powers and/or the right IO enhancements and/or Incarnate abilities can wreak havoc on anything. So don't compare your defeat numbers or damage output to a level 50 in today's game (i.e. comparing it to your Assault Rifle toon). There's a big disparity there.

The way I look at ST sets is as follows: Take out the damage source with the least resistance first. In other words, yeah the Lieutenant is going to hit harder, but he'll also take longer to kill than those two minions and the damage from said minions will stack up. Blasters are strong, so two-shot the minions first before worrying about the lieutenant.

As to how to make Disintegrate work best, I am not sure yet how it works at all since I am not participating in the beta. Would you mind giving a quick overview of how it works with the set's mechanics?

Sure thing.

Disintegrate is a 10 second long DOT attack. it does good damage on its own over the span of that full 10 seconds, but the real strength is that it applies a "Disintegrating" effect on the enemy. If you shoot someone that's already Disintegrating with another attack, you get an extra effect... more damage usually, or a high chance to knockdown, or a longer stun for the Lancer Shot, etc. Cutting Beam, the cone AOE, gives bonus damage, for instance.

Also, if you shoot someone who's Disintegrating with a single target attack (Single, Charged, Lancer, or Penetrating(snipe)) you have a CHANCE to "Spread Disintegration" to the 3 closest targets. Right now that chance is kind of low, but it's going to be doubled in an upcoming patch.

So, the theme of the set is as follows:
1. Disintegrate someone.
2. Shoot him with a single target attack.
3. Disintegration spreads itself to other targets.
4. Hammer them all with an AOE.

Sounds great, but for Blasters who have no serious mitigation, it seems to me that by the time you get from step 1 to 4, you are probably dead. Beam is not designed to have hard alpha punch right out of the gate, it's designed to set up Disintegration combos that eventually result in beefier damage against your foes.

In addition, if you don't get that Disintegration Spread on your first shot, your target may be dead as a doornail before you can achieve the Disintegration Spread because Blasters do whomping amounts of damage. For Def or Corr, you have more time since, well, you don't kill as quickly and can land more attacks on the Disintegrated target before it's down.

It's worth noting that Lancer Shot, the only hard mez in the set, is a short lasting Disorient with 40 foot range. It does the best ST damage outside of the snipe, though.

Hmm... From what you say, it sounds like we are about to run into the same problem that Blasters have with Dual Pistols: the set has a gimmick that makes it unique in relation to other blast sets (Swap Ammo for DP, Disintegration for BR), but due to the different design of blasters vs. defenders/corruptors, that gimmick is nullified. And since I've heard that the damage of Beam Rifle is sub-par without Disintegration, it would be worth suggesting on the feedback forums that the chance to spread Disintegration should be higher for Blasters than for Defenders or Corruptors. I'd suggest it myself, but since I have not played the set yet, I have no grounds on which to make that suggestion.

As it is, let me ask this: Blaster damage being as high as it is, do you find yourself needing Disintegration on anything but tougher enemies? For example, take a standard 3 person mob: 2 minions and a lieutenant. If you open with a snipe shot to a minion, could you finish them off with Single Shot, launch Cutting Beam on the rest of them, and then use a Single Target attack chain (Single, Charged, Lancer) to finish them off? If that's the case, you could completely disregard Disintegration except on tougher enemies (Bosses and higher), rather than trying to make it work when you do not actually need it.

Disintegration helps, and I insert it anywhere I can -- it certainly makes the one guy I shoot at drop faster. But dropping one enemy about 3-5 seconds sooner than I would have without Disintegration isn't really a difference maker. The real problem isn't the guy I'm shooting at, it's all his buddies, who are at full health and busy cracking open my skull to eat my brain candy.

I think the intention is that Disintegration SPREAD means once you're done dealing with your designated victim, all his buddies are Disintegrated, and thus a lot easier to deal with. Backended damage, basically. But with the numbers right now I've never actually had that happen. Maybe in another patch, when the spread chance goes up, it'll actually help me. Right now it's only useful against my current target, and that's not enough to keep me alive.

I hear ya. I agree, I hope that they raise the chance for Spreading to a decent percentage. Or perhaps a Disintegration Spread upon the death of the Disintegrating target?

As for your other problem, the one where all of his buddies are ganging up on you, here are a few possible solutions:

• Hover Blast - This is a tried-and-true method of damage mitigation for blasters. If you can stay up and out of their melee range, at least half of their attacks (and usually the stronger ones) are completely useless. If you can fit it into your build/concept, I highly recommend it. If not, there are other methods.
• Immobilzation Abuse - Use and abuse the T1 power of your secondary. Yes, it probably causes redraw with the Beam Rifle, but keeping the enemies away from you is worth it. If you are running Energy Manipulation, Power Thrust can still be useful, just not as much. If you are running devices, I would actually recommend Caltrops over Web Grenade as it animates faster, does some DoT, and can affect more than one enemy.
• Sniping/Pulling - Try sniping a minion that has strayed a little further away from his buddies. A small majority of the time, you can pull one or two off of the group and kill them without their buddies noticing, thus "thinning the herd" as it were. However, if the pull succeeds and only one or two enemies start charging you, I recommend letting them get a bit closer before finishing them off, as their death also acts as an alert.
• Using Corners - This is useful with pulling. After you snipe an enemy, whether you manage to pull just one or the entire mob, duck behind a corner or through a doorway. This forces the enemy (enemies) into a bottleneck, where you can easily line up AoE attacks, force them all onto a mitigating "patch" (Caltrops, Ice Patch, Burn, etc.), or use the angles of a room take them out one at a time.

Defiance 2.0 kind of works like that. With Defiance 2.0, I have the option to intentionally fail at AoEing, by using ST blasts early in the fight and AoE blasts later in the fight. If I choose to do so, Defiance 2.0 rewards my bad gameplay by making it somewhat less bad.

Mmmyeahno.

Making bad gameplay less bad is simply not a buff, bonus, perk, or positive of any kind, even if the devs believe it is. Which leads me to propose a theory:

All past, present, and future combo based powersets in City of Heroes suck.

I haven't seen Street Justice yet, so I'll go lurk the melee AT boards a bit and see if my theory holds up.

My Beamer got his level bump and I'm loving the animations and sound effects, but I'm not really loving the way it plays. Mainly I'm not clicking with the disintegration effect. I can see if I'm fighting a tough ST how it would be a great thing to have, but I can't seem to make it work in a x8 AoE situation. I just can't tell if it's spreading and the general scatter that you encounter makes it hard to really set anything up. It's clearly a set designed with ST damage in mind, so maybe that's why I'm not too in to it.

That said it's really fun to double Overcharge enemies with Burnout.

I'm having a blast with it. I've wanted to play a ST blaster for a while and haven't liked one since Fire Blast and Ice Blast got their animation nerfed (slowed down). I know Beam Gun isn't any faster, it's mostly an issue of looks/perception. The animations of Fire Blast and Ice Blast were clearly made for shorter activation times and that ackward pause just sucks the fun out of it for me, whereas Beam Rifle just works seamlessly as far as I've seen.

Reading this thread makes me sad. It is obvious to me that whoever was on the dev team way back yeasteryear that put the Gundam costume pieces in(like titan crest) either does not work there anymore or is not important enough to be able to have input on this set.

What I am getting at is in any cartoon or comic or whatever I have ever seen, the person shooting the blaster doesnt have to "tag" their target with some goofy weopon effect before they can blast the crap out of them. I mean there are two basic forms of laser guns....

G.I. Joe style from the original 80's cartoon. This is the laser machine gun style, you remember. red and blue lasers cover the sky, people shoot 1000 rounds of laser blast off in all directions, pew pew freegin everywhere. Even in this style, the bad guys were usually defeated handily by a shot or two. It was just the hits were'nt as frequent. This style, while visually entertaining, wouldnt be a good fit in coh unless most of the animation for the blasts were "fluff" laser sprays going all over the place. So long as the attacks were simply hit or miss, without correlation to the visuals, it would be fine, and would offer tons of pew pew without this silly combo buisness.

The other style of laser blasts is the Gundam style, wherein the beam blast is immensly powerful, and "aoe" simply means the power output is cranked to the max and the beam becomes massive enough to encompass multiple foes. This style would also not work, unless the visuals were correlated to the power output, I.E. no ZZ gundam ultra forehead beam cannon. This is the style I was hoping for, with powerful single target on a slightly longer rech, and aoe cones with a "charged up" big beam that encompasses multiple foes(though wouldnt outright destroy them) or at least a nuke like that, that would destroy them.

Instead, sadly, I read we are getting an underpowered set that requires "extra" attacks in order to have suitable damage output.

I wish the devs would realize players are generally happy with the mechanics of current sets, and seek new visuals and style over function in the new ones, especially somthing as "deffinition of blaster" as a freegin laser gun. Save the combo crap for something a little more off the wall, like water blast or earth blast or something. Laser blast should equal straight forward pew pew blasting goodness, not some tag the enemy first with a 10 second dot. gah, as if a blaster has 10 seconds to kill a foe before getting massacred. I mean, just reading the 4 step process for aoe profit above makes me cringe. Its a laser/beam rifle... I dont want to "set up" the damage, I want to pull the trigger furiously and paint the sky with red and blue laser blasts.

My dreams of pew pew may forever be dashed.

This set can be a beast with the right secondary. I picked electric as my secondary focusing on buildup, thunderstrike, power sink, and shocking grasp along with the electrical mastery. Beam rifle is a freaking end hog, granted I'm just slotting with SOs but I feel this set will be massive with IOs.

Leading off with piercing beam and disintegrate seemed to develop better results than trying to end with them.

Is Overcharge a crashless nuke because it seemed like it when I vaporized my lvl 52 rikti mob in RWZ.

I made an BR/nrg blaster with Munitions mastery, I am enjoying the set greatly and I may will roll it live.

It not a run and gun set, you have to prioritize your Disintegrate targets.

I don't mind Beam Rifle seeming to be on the weak side (especially since it really isn't), but it does suffer from thinking inside the box.

Beam Rifle isn't Assault Rifle. It's not ever going to be the "realistic" blast set. So it could've had any number of various effects on its blasts. A containment beam, a repulsion beam, an endurance drain beam, hell, even a healing beam. This is comic book fantasy, any kind of magical effects could have gone in this set. Instead, we got damage, dots, and dots that cause more damage.

the Beam Rifle has a cone as well as a uncrashable nuke that is a target Aoe so if tht is not enuff aoe for you grab munition mastery and your judgement attack

It seems to me taking Beam Rifle and relegating to Defender status is like saying it's going to be a 'meh' set at best.....

I was hoping it would be something a damage dealer type would actually covet.... I guess we'll see.