Well the CEBR map is designed for Claws/Electric Armor brutes so any blaster would not do well on it. No mez protection and little defense or resistances (especially to energy which is what that map is designed for) will mean you won't stay around long enough no matter how much damage you put out.
Dark blast is a good set. I view the -to hit as a nice addition but it alone will probably not help with survivability. First, there is not enough, the powers that have it only do 5% unenhanced. Second, most are single target except Umbral Torrent and Tenebrous Tentacles which are cones so delivering the -to hit to a mob can be very tricky, stacking it and keeping it up can be very difficult. Only Blackstar will deliver a significant -to hit to a entire mob but then that leaves you drained of endurance so killing everything is more important then debuffing them. Against a single hard target you will be fairly successful, against lessor things you had better be killing them faster then you can stack -to hit or you are already in trouble.
About Death Shroud, it is a good power but unless you are survivable it won't do much good. Unfortunatly it doesn't have the -to hit in it and the damage is low. Over time it will chew minions and Lt. up but you have to live for that time.
A Dark/MM will be nice. Drain Psyche at level 20 and life drain at 26 combined with some defenses and the -to hit will increase your survivability.
If your goal is to power level without using the invention system I would suggest blasters are not the place for you. Scrappers and Brutes do that much better. Blasters are the king of damage and good build with IOs can be very survivable but at low level and without IOs blasters are more of a low number of hard targets toon where power leveling takes a large number of equal or lower enemies. Blasters have good AOEs and can take out large numbers but they can't really do that at low levels like CEBR is designed for.
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Thanks for the feedback. Yeah I actually have a CEBR and the map i was running was mostly melee/smashing damage. I was just trying to see if it would be possible to powerlevel a blaster like I'm doing with a brute. But as the damage cap is a lot lower (225%?) than a brute (675%) I just can't kill them in time before i run out of inspirations (stacking dmg, def and res to the caps). If you can think of a way to get that kind of damage out from a blaster that would be cool.|
Originally Posted by Flower
Well the CEBR map is designed for Claws/Electric Armor brutes so any blaster would not do well on it. No mez protection and little defense or resistances (especially to energy which is what that map is designed for) will mean you won't stay around long enough no matter how much damage you put out.
Dark blast is a good set. I view the -to hit as a nice addition but it alone will probably not help with survivability. First, there is not enough, the powers that have it only do 5% unenhanced. Second, most are single target except Umbral Torrent and Tenebrous Tentacles which are cones so delivering the -to hit to a mob can be very tricky, stacking it and keeping it up can be very difficult. Only Blackstar will deliver a significant -to hit to a entire mob but then that leaves you drained of endurance so killing everything is more important then debuffing them. Against a single hard target you will be fairly successful, against lessor things you had better be killing them faster then you can stack -to hit or you are already in trouble. About Death Shroud, it is a good power but unless you are survivable it won't do much good. Unfortunatly it doesn't have the -to hit in it and the damage is low. Over time it will chew minions and Lt. up but you have to live for that time. A Dark/MM will be nice. Drain Psyche at level 20 and life drain at 26 combined with some defenses and the -to hit will increase your survivability. If your goal is to power level without using the invention system I would suggest blasters are not the place for you. Scrappers and Brutes do that much better. Blasters are the king of damage and good build with IOs can be very survivable but at low level and without IOs blasters are more of a low number of hard targets toon where power leveling takes a large number of equal or lower enemies. Blasters have good AOEs and can take out large numbers but they can't really do that at low levels like CEBR is designed for. |
Completely agree on the cones, its bad enough getting the right angle to get enough for mobs for good damage, let alone trying to rotate the ToHit debuff on them.
Main reason I'd rather PL, is due to the fact not many of my friends play and pugs can be so hit or miss when leveling. My highest char I've levelled properly is a 35 Fire/Rad Troller and 35 FF/Elec defender which seemed to take an actual age. Managed to get my CEBR to 22 in just 2-3 hours or so (with no previous AE experience or anything else really heh). I've spent many hours lvling chars on other games and I've just come back to this as stop gap before D3 comes out so don't want to spend the entire time levelling
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Probably not in the context of what you are doing. Brutes at the top end of their brute bar will probably out damage even a blaster and on a map like CEBR you can stay at the top of the brute bar making them the ideal choice for that situation.|
Originally Posted by Kaesar
But as the damage cap is a lot lower (225%?) than a brute (675%) I just can't kill them in time before i run out of inspirations (stacking dmg, def and res to the caps). If you can think of a way to get that kind of damage out from a blaster that would be cool.
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In normal missions and TFs a blaster is king due to Brutes not being able to keep that brute bar at the top. Scrappers also have an advantage on brutes due to their higher base damage and critical hits, however that advantage is much narrower then compared to a blaster since blasters also get defiance which like the brute bar can build damage as they attack.
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Your best bet leveling is to latch onto any TFs, SFs or Trials running. There are so many of them, pay attention to the TF channels on a particular server and there's always one being announced. The ITF alone lets you start participating at 35 and you can level like crazy with that. Plus all the bonuses, drops and salvage you get on a real Task Force instead of the AE.
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Originally Posted by Kaesar
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah I actually have a CEBR and the map i was running was mostly melee/smashing damage. I was just trying to see if it would be possible to powerlevel a blaster like I'm doing with a brute. But as the damage cap is a lot lower (225%?) than a brute (675%) I just can't kill them in time before i run out of inspirations (stacking dmg, def and res to the caps). If you can think of a way to get that kind of damage out from a blaster that would be cool.
Completely agree on the cones, its bad enough getting the right angle to get enough for mobs for good damage, let alone trying to rotate the ToHit debuff on them. Main reason I'd rather PL, is due to the fact not many of my friends play and pugs can be so hit or miss when leveling. My highest char I've levelled properly is a 35 Fire/Rad Troller and 35 FF/Elec defender which seemed to take an actual age. Managed to get my CEBR to 22 in just 2-3 hours or so (with no previous AE experience or anything else really heh). I've spent many hours lvling chars on other games and I've just come back to this as stop gap before D3 comes out so don't want to spend the entire time levelling |
A Dark/Energy pure ranged character would probably solo very well. Especially once you get the tentacles, those will keep all but bosses out of your face. Easily perma boost range, I would imagine this combo would be pretty safe and effective.
Oh yeah and if you are going to be soloing I wouldn't bother taking the nuke unless you plan on raising the difficulty to have more enemies.
I don't play Blasters often but I am leveling two right now Dark/MM and Beam/Fire. Dark/MM solos a lot better than Beam. I would say 2x better because Dark has some healing, hold and knock back and tohit debuffs. Beam Rifle has very high damage but it's kinda slow.
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
Fire and Beam rifle seem to be the best primaries, while Energy and Dark are the best secondaries. Dark's really nice if you burn through end quickly too.
http://www.virtueverse.net/wiki/Shadow_Mokadara
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Brutes got the huge nerf stick. It is rare to the point of being stupid for the Fury bar to be above 2/3 anymore.
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Originally Posted by Flower
Probably not in the context of what you are doing. Brutes at the top end of their brute bar will probably out damage even a blaster and on a map like CEBR you can stay at the top of the brute bar making them the ideal choice for that situation.
In normal missions and TFs a blaster is king due to Brutes not being able to keep that brute bar at the top. Scrappers also have an advantage on brutes due to their higher base damage and critical hits, however that advantage is much narrower then compared to a blaster since blasters also get defiance which like the brute bar can build damage as they attack. |
Dark/MM could solo at higher difficulties on SOs.
Self-heal+Drain Psyche+Cone chain of death - kill lots of ppl.
Fire/Mental too if you can survive with DP alone.
But if you're set on lower diffs, Fire/Fire, Fire/Elec, at x1 ice blast is a good option too imo.
From a mechanics standpoint, it's hard to beat Sonic/Energy for easy soloing. Put a spawn to sleep for a long time thanks to Power Boost, then pummel them down one at a time with powerful stunning melee attacks. Of course if you keep the difficulty reasonably low then Fire/Fire can be a lot of fun... you wipe out spawns so fast you don't really need a lot of protection, especially if you have Aid Self to pop between fights and carry a few inspirations for EBs. But really any Blaster can solo fine on low difficulty, the problem comes when you try to handle larger spawns or purples.
Cascade, level 50 Blaster (NRG/NRG since before it was cool)
Mechmeister, level 50 Bots / Traps MM
FAR too many non-50 alts to name
[u]Arcs[u]
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Sorry about all the questions...
I rolled a Dark/Dark last night to play with just for fun, was actually trying to see if i could PL myself using CEBR map in AE, kinda failed on that one.
Obviously blaster survivability is highly influenced by kill speed. However everyone really does seem to rate /MM as a secondary and the only real reason I went /Dark was for Death Shroud (to help with PLing).
Dark Blast already has its own heal and also lots of -ToHit debuffs so how do you guys think Dark/MM would compare damage wise and for soloing?
I'm thinking Drain Psyche, Siphon Life and -ToHit with 2 different 'types' of damage can't be bad, I just don't know how it stacks up vs Fire (hopefully better than my rad suggestion which I've decided against, due to it having too many 'close' range based abilities for my play style)