Ranged Toon Block
By
boppaholic,
Posted on: 2011-12-05 08:58 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
A huntsman or crab SoA would work. I see you have a fire blast defender, but fire is really good on a corruptor. Scourge + Rain of Fire is beautiful. You also might give Dominators a try. Some of the assault sets are range heavy, and the controls are nice too.
Blasters don't have to be squishy, they can be built with quite a bit of survivability.
My main is a blaster and I have taken down Giant Monsters with help from pets, did a rikti pylon with no pets, regularly run x4 and sometimes x8.
Just defending blasters a little 
. Now if they are not your cup of tea then a peacebringer/warshade can work nice. On the villain side the Fortuna has a ton of ranged attacks and some nice mez powers. They have mez protection and are easy to cap defense on so while their HP is low they should be very survivable.
Some of the scrapper and brute sets have some ranged attacks, combined with a good epic you can build one that can operate from melee and range quite easily.
Fortunatas and Crabs are absolutely easy-mode blasters if you don't want to have to worry about coming up with a survivable blaster build from square one. They're fun to play, too, but I got bored of mine at 50 and 41 respectively just because they're too effective out of the box.
If you wanted to give blasters another shot, I suggest either /MM or /EM with a focus on the self buffs rather than the melee attacks. Doing that works well with almost any primary, psi blast being the only one I'd recommend avoiding since it's simply outclassed by Fortunatas (and, pathetically, the defender version of psi blast as well) in every regard. Beam/MM is a combo I've been running lately and it's plenty durable with a focus on ranged defense since there's never any reason to get close to enemies apart from draining their psyches.
It looks like you don't have a L50 Fire Blast Corr.
This would be my first recommendation.
I really love my Fire/Dark, Fire/Time & Fire/Rad Corrs.
The Fire/Dark is probably the most survivable, with the best combination of control/debuff (and a pet).
The Fire/Rad is great when I just want to focus on shooting more than anything, and when I want to profit from my teammates deaths. Good times.
The Fire/Time is a very strong build, but its also pretty busy overall. Its probably the most well rounded of the 3 but the somewhat longish recharge on Slowed Response is a little irritating at times.
If you just want ranged damage without the support, but you're having a hard time getting into a Blaster - you might try a Dominator.
Fire/Fire is a very fun, high damage build.
Survivability for a blaster will be tough for a lowbie toon. Once you are able to invest IOs into ut, you'll start seeing better results... so be patient and invest.
For general survivability, might I recommend dark blast. You have a fast recharging self heal attack, tohit debuffs, and cone mitigation (kb and immobilize). Try it out and see if you like it. The ST hold attack hits hard too. Just a thought.
I'm working on a dark/NRG for the power boost and boost range deliciousness. But I hear dark/ice is a nice combo (see shiver)
Fire/Kin Corruptor, Fire/Fire Dominator, Kin/Sonic Defender, etc.
I think a kin toon would be savagely sought after for a melee-heavy server.
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Originally Posted by Celestial_Lord
I am suffering from ranged toon block. I want to make a new ranged toon, but am coming up blank on ideas. My two main toons are a level 50 Force Field / Fire Blast Defender and a level 50 Super Strength / Electric Armor Brute. I bring out a level 50 Dual Pistols / Dark Miasma Corruptor whenever debuffs are needed. However, I'm starting to get bored of them, since they are all I've played for months.
Honestly, I want to make a couple of new Brutes. But my home server is Exalted, where 80% of all level 50 toons are melee. No joke. So many PuG trials have failed because nearly all of the toons on it were melee. We even had to improvise our Hamidon raid strategy on Saturday 'cause we had three full melee teams and like one blaster and two Corruptors. So if I'm going to make a new toon, it must be ranged as I don't want to add to that. The problem is that in my six years of playing the game, I could never get a Blaster above level 20. Just far too squishy, and I never liked any of the secondaries. Someone recommended that I try a human-only Peacebringer. Any other suggestions? |
- Dominators, played at range. Fire/Fire, Mind/Energy, Plant/Psi. I play all of the above entirely, or mostly, at range. All three are solid combos.
- Fire/ Corrs are great. Although if you spend a lot of time playing a /Fire Defender you might not want to play Fire/ again any time soon.
- Soldier of Arachnos - Crabs and Forts are both rock solid at range. I'd do a Crab before a Peacebringer personally, although the PB might be more fun leveling up.
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Originally Posted by Rad_Avenger
- Fire/ Corrs are great Although if you spend a lot of time playing a /Fire Defender you might not want to play Fire/ again any time soon.
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Couple of things.
While Defenders do get Fire Blast, they don't get Scourge.
The OP has a Fire Blast defender, but its Force Field - not a debuffer, and not a debuffer with Scourge.
It wouldn't take much to get a feel for the difference either - you can roll a Fire/Dark Corr and have Tar Patch, Rain of Fire and Fire Ball...by level 6.
I was on an ITF last night watching my RoF hit for 9 damage per tick, +a little reactive...and then it began to Scourge.
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Oh yeah, triple scourge is nice, no doubt.
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Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus
While Defenders do get Fire Blast, they don't get Scourge.
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If you're looking to complement a bunch of melee characters for group content, might I suggest a /Sonic Blast Defender?
Your secondary will provide more -Res debuff than any Defender primary.
Pair it with Kinetics, which is a very melee-friendly primary to further amplify your team damage boost. The downside to this combo is its less survivable than some other Defenders, but you shouldn't need that with all the melee characters around.
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I got a Sonic/Elec Blaster to 50, my first one. Did a lot of her stuff solo until about lvl 35-37 ish, then ran TF's and WSTs with her, earning merits and the TF Commander Badge. Now working on her Incarnate Stuff. Really liked that combo.
Huntsman, Range cap, Hover blaster with perma pets. Pick up Barrier and its pretty fun having 3 pets that just won't die. You have a short number of attacks and will probably pick up another from one of the PPP's. But with the double maneuvers and assault those small number of attacks really pack a big punch.
1. Why Soft Cap is Important : http://dechskaison.blogspot.com/2011...important.html
2. Limits: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Limits
3. Attack Mechanics: http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Attack_Mechanics
4. Rule of Five: http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Rule_o...e_Law_of_Fives
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The main problem is that this is only true at high levels, and especially at 50. Until you get enough slots to stack defense set bonuses and enough firepower to quickly thin out spawns you are going to be squishy, so if the OP has trouble making it through the early game on Blasters I'm not sure the lure of what you can do in the endgame with a multi-billion inf build will be enough. I love Blasters but you definitely have to either like teaming or be willing to put up with much lower difficulty settings at the lower levels (especially compared to a Brute).|
Originally Posted by Flower
Blasters don't have to be squishy, they can be built with quite a bit of survivability.
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That said, there's really nothing that compares to a Blaster for damage. My suggestion would be either Archery/Energy (hover Blaster, pure ranged build with perma-Boost Range) or Fire/Mental (devastating at both cone range and PBAoE range). But only if you can put up with being squishy for 2/3 of your career and you don't mind spending a lot of inf or always teaming... solo Blasters need very high end builds to perform well enough to please someone who is used to Brutes.
If you want something tougher, you could go with a Crab or Huntsman but honestly their damage isn't that great. Crabs get pretty nasty if you go the perma-pet route but then you're more of a Mastermind with decent attacks rather than a ranged specialist... if you want that why not go Bots/Traps and be done with it?
I like my Crab but she doesn't come close to my Blasters on damage... she's more like a very tough Corruptor. I would suggest a Fire/Dark or Fire/Rad Corruptor (maybe Fire/Time, though I haven't played /Time enough to really know how good it is yet) rather than a Crab unless you are focusing on solo survivability. Another option for a more team-support oriented character is a Rad/Sonic Defender... you'll get decent damage while solo while providing a ton of debuffs for a team. Cold/Sonic might also be good if you want a bit more speed in soloing hard targets... Rad/Sonic can solo GMs and AVs, but I suspect Cold/Sonic would do it faster since you get more -resist.
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
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Time/Fire Defender!
+Defense to the Melees
Debuffs for the enemies
Control for the Hami Raids (Time Stop!)
I might also suggest Ice/Time Corr, to add another hold.
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I was gonna recommend a dark/ice/elec defender, but then I noticed you said you don't want the game on easy mode 
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Ice/Time is soooo good, tons of slows and holds.|
Originally Posted by BrandX
Time/Fire Defender!
+Defense to the Melees Debuffs for the enemies Control for the Hami Raids (Time Stop!) I might also suggest Ice/Time Corr, to add another hold. |
For a Blaster... A Dark/Mental can be VERY survivable with an early cone attack chain, a self heal (Life Drain) and a +regen/+recovery plus -regen/-recov debuff in Drain Psyche.
I had this originally in the I failed at Blaster thread:
The Sonic/Ice blaster.
You have for powers:
Sonics
1. Shriek Ranged, Minor Damage(Smashing/Energy), Foe -Damage Resistance
2. Scream Ranged, Moderate Damage over Time(Smashing/Energy), Foe -Damage Resistance
3. Howl Ranged Cone, Medium Damage(Smashing/Energy), Foe - Damage Resistance(All)
4. Shockwave Ranged (Cone), Minor Damage(Smashing/Energy), Foe Knockback
5. Shout Ranged, Heavy Damage(Smashing/Energy), Foe -Damage Resistance(All)
6. Amplify Self +To-Hit, +Damage
7. Siren's Song Ranged (Cone), Minor Damage(Energy), Foe Sleep
8. Screech Ranged, Minor Damage (Smashing/Energy), Foe Disorient, -Damage Resistance(All)
9. Dreadful Wail Point Blank Area of Effect, Extreme Damage(Energy/Smashing), Foe Disorient, -Damage Resistance; Self -Recovery
Ice
1. Chilblain Ranged, Moderate Damage over Time(Cold), Foe Immobilize, -Speed, -Recharge
2. Frozen Fists Melee, Minor Damage(Cold/Smashing), Foe -Recharge, -Speed
3. Ice Sword Melee, Moderate Damage(Cold/Lethal), Foe -Recharge, -Speed
4. Chilling Embrace Toggle: Point Blank Area of Effect, Foe -Recharge, -Speed, -Damage
5. Build Up Self +Damage, +To-Hit
6. Ice Patch Location (Point Blank Area of Effect), Foe Knockdown
7. Shiver Ranged(Cone), Foe -Speed, -Recharge
8. Freezing Touch Melee, Minor Damage(Cold), Foe Hold
9. Frozen Aura Point Blank Area of Effect Melee, Foe Sleep
How do you play it?
Notice almost all of the attacks on both sides are Ranged. The few Melee powers are used to KEEP them at Range!
At low levels (pre-Sirens)
1. approach a group - use Howl to lower resistance and immediately Shockwave. With Chilling embrace on Combat jump over the group (which slows them all and -damage for good measure).
2. Keep alternating with Howl and Shockwave and immobilize your Lt or Boss target anchor with Chillblain and smack him with Shout as well once in a while.
This will let you shred any incoming foes and minions that near are slowed by Chilling Embrace and I use Scream on them.
At higher levels
1. Siren Song - it is a sleep with DAMAGE!
2. Drop Ice Patch under the sleeping foes also chilling them with your Embrace
3. Frozen Touch the boss after you Chillblain and it will freeze almost any boss
4. Frozen Aura - More sleep
5. Shockwave
6. Howl
7. Siren's again if any are left and freeze that boss again.
You can in utter and complete safety wipe out nearly any foes within a very short time and if any get near you Shiver, Chilling Embrace and Ice Patch keep them away from you.
In fact you have zero reason to even take any Melee powers except Frozen Touch, Ice Patch and Chilling Embrace.
You have it - the Tank Mage ranged blaster.
I am suffering from ranged toon block. I want to make a new ranged toon, but am coming up blank on ideas. My two main toons are a level 50 Force Field / Fire Blast Defender and a level 50 Super Strength / Electric Armor Brute. I bring out a level 50 Dual Pistols / Dark Miasma Corruptor whenever debuffs are needed. However, I'm starting to get bored of them, since they are all I've played for months.
Honestly, I want to make a couple of new Brutes. But my home server is Exalted, where 80% of all level 50 toons are melee. No joke. So many PuG trials have failed because nearly all of the toons on it were melee. We even had to improvise our Hamidon raid strategy on Saturday 'cause we had three full melee teams and like one blaster and two Corruptors. So if I'm going to make a new toon, it must be ranged as I don't want to add to that.
The problem is that in my six years of playing the game, I could never get a Blaster above level 20. Just far too squishy, and I never liked any of the secondaries.
Someone recommended that I try a human-only Peacebringer. Any other suggestions?
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