really down on Beam Rifle for Blasters

I'm regretting using my paragon points on Beam Rifle, at least for the purpose of making a new blaster. I just can't find a good synergy.

BR is very much a ranged set that benefits from good positioning. That should be right up my alley, I love cones because they are more interesting to play.
But the set itself has not tools to make sure you can leave the baddies in position, both for max effectiveness and for your protection, and most blaster secondaries don't either: if I'm a ranged Boss killer, I don't want to be spending my time killing minions in melee.

A BR/Dark Corruptor is the first thing that sprang to mind after I read about the set: /Dark has cone fear to help you set up seafely, Tar Patch for -Res and making sure the bad guys stay grouped for disintegration spread, lots of -toHit to laugh at the minions,....

Unfortunately I have a Fire/Dark Corruptor and a Dark/Sonic Defender, both of which are absolute monsters (the defender can solos +2x8 at 50) so I don't want to do Dark Miasma again.

So the way I look at blasters, their secondary is more a set of mule powers with a few utilities than something you actually use in combat. The best "secondary" for Beam is Ranged Defense

/Dev is a great set for slotting Ranged def, but my main is NRG/Dev and I don't want another /Dev blaster.

The best non /Dev combo I came up with is BR/EM: Mako's bite in the EM ST powers and T-Strike in the beam ST power for Ranged Defense. Power Boost and Boost Range being the 2 utilities powers. Leaves room for Weave, Aid Self hover or possibly SS+stealth IO for easier positioning.

Seems quite serviceable, but not so different from my NRG/Dev hover blaster, so I can't convince myself I want to play the combo. I want something that feels different, so maybe I should give up on beam (hence my title) and try Elec/Elec or something that plays differently.

I haven't yet looked at BR/MM because I'm not familiar with MM, at least it gets you another cone.

Outside of /Dark, I'm not seeing any great synergies on the Corruptor side either. /Traps is just as slow as /Dev so would be used as a mule mostly, although FFG is great.

FF/Beam defender isn't bad.

Since you take so few FF powers, you can take all of the beam ones. Since the FF powers are completely passive, you don't ever see redraw. You can also cap yourself to whatever type of defense you feel like, and with tough plus temp invul and excellent defender mods get > 70% s/l resists. Plus, it is a good conceptual match with futuristic shields and futuristic beam weaponry.

I think it works out not too badly because FF is as defensive as you could ever want a set to be, so the high ST damage of Beam is very nice in slamming single targets.

My only problem with my (not currently playing right now to be honest) lvl-36-ish one is that even with the miracle and numina uniques in health and 3-slotted stamina with +end proc, the character sucks end like you wouldn't believe. Even with much of the toggles turned off it sucks end.

Not a bad futuristic tank type of character though if that is what you want to go for.

I often find myself in the same boat with blasters especially paired with a primary like BR which gives zero reason to be in melee range. I found myself looking at corruptors also for better synergy. BR/Rad is quite nasty for team play, drop IR and EF and then pound on hard targets. Concepts are easy with the pairing also.

Ele/ele blasters are fun if you're looking for something different. Enough of soft control in -end and stun procs to make you feel like a pseudo troller while still playing like a blapper. Sappers often get a bad Rep and I wavered before dedicating time to one but I fell in love once I started noticing paragon protectors, cyclopses etc. Unable to pop their T9'sbecause they were drained.

I'd be all over BR/FF if it was available as a corruptor set, but a defender damage levels and without -Res its damage is likely to be meh.

BR/sonic is available to Corruptors, but it's hard slotting for defense with that combo and +Res is not sufficient to make a corruptor survivable. the Mezz protection bubble is the only nice power.

my comment about FF offering no Res debug made me think about Rad.

it's a bit similar to Dark in that it helps not get hit (a little) and kill faster.
the problem is that the BR mechanics are anchor-like so both sets would rely on finding targets in the group that may die last. on the other hand, if they die, who cares?
maybe I'll check the Corr forums for this combo.

Had the same issue so I ended up rolling a BR/Poison. Got him up to 26 and decided I hated the combo (Poison's key powers, Envenom and Weaken, recharge very fast even unslotted and you have to use them often if you want to be effective, so LOTS of redraw).

Ended up with a BR/Traps, which is great. Traps require you to go to melee to setup first but you're well protected and after the setup you can go back to range and blast away. I also considered BR/Rad but I already played rad too much.

I am liking Beam Rifle on Blaster a lot. During beta, I read that Disintegrated doesn't happen often enough and I think they later increased the chance?

Beam Rifle on Blaster does a lot of damage! Maybe I haven't played Blaster for a long time but when disintegrated happens, it really melts down bosses. The stun in Lance Shot really helps soloing. I didn't know it has stun component.

Beam Rifle has weapon redraw and that's one of the reasons why I chose Blaster instead of Corr/Defender because I don't want to use secondary powers to cause redraws. I took /Fire secondary but I doubt I'll be using much of it.


One quick question, what determines Disintegrated Spread?

once disintegration is on, other BR attacks spread it to adjacent targets. this makes it important baddies stay grouped.

Don't be too quick to dismiss BR/NRG as the range boost alone is extremely useful for cone attacks...

Energy Manipulation's Boosting Abilities:

Poison is too active to fit well with BR in my opinion. You either want set and forget like FF or front loaded like Dev, Trap, Dark or Rad so once you start firing your BR, you only stop when they're dead.

I rolled a beam/rad myself, and so far, I'm loving it.


Basically, pop your rad debuffs on a minion, and disentegrate the boss. Due to the spread mechanic, the minion will start taking damage, and boss is debuffed from the rad debuffs.

Solo, it works wonders, you just have to pick 2 anchors (1 weak, 1 strong) and work backwards, using spread, and your cone attack to kill minions, and your disentegration and nice single target attacks to kill bosses.

Plus mine is a hover blasting, range defense capped, 50-ish lethal/smash resistance beast.. I can't wait to play it at higher levels..

If you're married to the idea of using your melee attacks, beam rifle isn't a great choice. If, on the other hand, you can accept the idea of being a long range weapons platform, beam is quite good for blasters. The secondaries that work best for this approach are EM and MM. Both of them get build up and other useful self buffs, MM also gets aoes if you want 'em and world of confusion. World of confusion is crap, but it's one of the highlights of MM because it accepts coercive persuasion, in turn granting you 10% recharge and 5% ranged defense. EM gets boost range which similarly helps you out on the avoiding being smooshed front.

Beam Rifle is a fantastic set for Blasters, it's just that it can be hard to see it at lower levels. I choose /Energy Manip for mine, and Boost Range has been pretty awesome for me. Trying to position for Lancer Shot has been annoying, but Boost Range has helped a lot in that area, and it makes the cone AoE way more potent and more likely to hit the target cap.

For teaming, I haven't noticed Disintegrate that much. Most of the time, the bosses die right after I put Disintegrate on them, which never gives me time to spread it or for the Disintegrate DoT to be worth the time to apply it. I imagine it's far more noticeable when soloing or when facing AVs, when you don't have a team of scrapperlock happy Street Justice scrappers beating up on every Boss in sight before you have time to setup.

Overcharge is where the set really shines though. To be honest, Beam Rifle is a poor set for AoE before Overcharge, since you only get one relatively weak cone attack as your only AoE. Every 90 seconds though, you get to wave goodbye to an entire spawn with no end crash. It's a thing of beauty.

I don't quite understand all the redraw negativity.

I have a beamer/Poison Corr at about 44. Yes there is redraw, but every battle starts out the same... the redraw or poison activity for me is all at the beginning.... so it doesn't seem to bother me.

I start out with perhaps a hold, envenom, then go to town with a series of Beam Rifle attacks. If things go south, then yes, I revisit the hold... perhaps the slow cone power, but who cares about redraw at that point? I mean you're typically running for your life or not in a position to attack properly anyway....

The poison hold, and envenom are fast... my big beef is with the poison late game powers. They stink really bad. Envenom assures you do similar 'blaster' type damage, the rest of poison is specific to holds/slows/boss debuffs. All are useful, but the trade off is redraw. Again a lot depends on how you play it.... I don't mind starting a battle with poison then moving on.

Well that's true I suppose. But I only use Weaken on a very tough boss/AV or what not in which case it's worth using... not just for me, but the whole team.

Again, I submit it's something you learn to live with synergy wise. I simply start each battle with the poison element of the fight. When that's done, the gun comes out, and usually stays out unless something has gone very badly.....

Typically, I am not jumping back and forth between the poison stuff and Beam. It's one, then the other.

On the other hand if someone wants to be simply a 'beamer' than I think Blaster is the choice for you, because with something like energy, you have your few powers that will sprinkle in with beam, and you can pretty much just hit your aim/build up and go to town.

I can understand the OP's point of view. I have no particular comment on the objective evaluation of the set, but I do say that I would have been very appreciative if there would have been a public preview of sets when they are released.

Having an opprotunity to at least try the set before having to spend points to purchase would be a nice gesture. I know some people have had the opprotunity in beta, but beta isn't for everyone.

It would be neat if you could preview new sets for a predetermined period of time and then when that time is up the character that you made would be locked until you either purchased the set or deleted the character (to free up the slot).

I did purchase beam and didn't really enjoy it. That's approximately $7 (I've found it effective to view all points, whether free or not, in terms of dollars. It helps me keep in prespective exactly what the cost really is since "points" can be deceiving if this isn't kept in mind) that I wasted. I'm now going to be less likely to purchase new sets as they're released, because of that experience.

I think beam is suitable for a more established player. It's not a toon I would consider to be my first 50 blaster let alone my first 50 toon.

I don't think the mechanics behind disintegrate and the spread are the best and could have been better thought out. I find it annoying that I need to keep incorporating disintegrate attack into my attacks. It ends up you get wrapped up trying to get the spread instead of killing mobs off sometimes. The mentality becomes if I can get the spread I can kill them all off on this next shot. But the spread never comes sometimes.

I consider it a toon I would make to see how it is because I can afford to do that. If I don't like it, it can just sit at the bottom of my character list with some other 50s I didn't like.

I have one at 28 and I'm just trekking along to see how it works out at level 50s with the IO build I have. If it stinks I strip it down and it sits in the back until I think they fixed it.

Ignore trying to spread and you will enjoy the set for it brings (single target focus). People try to use the dual blades combos, but I try to explain to them most of the time just go without them. You end up enjoy the set more this way.

I'm also finding it difficult to find a pairing for Beam Rifle, despite my strong desire to use the set. I love it conceptually, just not sure what to put it with.

BR/NRG Blaster would be my choice for a Blaster though. I don't typically like Blasters, but with that set up you could do pretty well by using your buffs from the secondary. MM can be effective too. A friend of mine has a BR/MM Blaster he can solo +4/x8 with. It's a crazily expensive IO build though of course.

FF/BR, Traps/BR, and Rad/BR all have good synergy for Defenders - both mechanically and conceptually. Personally I like the FF/BR concept the best. But, as you mentioned, the damage would be poor because it is a Defender. It would make a fantastic team support character though because the -Regen from BR is a significant debuff on hard targets and FF will probably have the whole team softcapped.

Corruptors could go BR/Traps or BR/Rad, but I've actually been contemplating a BR/TA. Using the debuff arrows and OSA first, you would be doing your set-up from the same range as your attacks. Everything would be softened up for your blasts, and your cone could be used to light the oil slick. You'd be really good at debuffs, and really good at damage. Of course, you may have some difficulty finding places for your defense set bonuses.

@Rorn ---- Blue Baron ---- Guardian