Ok so Beam Rifle...

It's the only powerset I bought, but unlike everybody else I didn't get it past 30 yet.

Now that you guys have your 50s, what are your thoughts on the set?

Is it as good for ST damage as Ice Blast (to pick a blast set that is considered good at ST, since we can't compare anything to fire).

I find the mechanic that Disintegration spread is not 100% on any attack besides the snipe quite annoying. But I don't even have the mininuke yet, so...

How do you feel about the set? Is it as powerful as you expected?

Also, is Piercing Beam worth it? Looks a lot like the similar DP power I find skippable.

Thanks for any feedback!

Seems like a good time to air my thoughts on BR..

I got the set when it was new, and made a BR/EM blaster. Some points now..

It is my 3rd /em blaster. I am not sure if this has a bearing on teh following, but it could do.

I wanted to try building a Defencey type blasta...ranged and s/l, just for the hell of it.

I wanted fly ( ALL my other toons have ss/cj) just for a change, and cause Afterburner is pretty and goes Fhwooosh.

Onto beam itself...I like the set. I think. The toon is currently at 47. As an aside, when I make a toon, I will play it up to 50, almost exclusively, not counting random tfs on other toons. My beam blaster has stalled at 47, and I have got 3 other 50s since then..including a blaster.

Beam..the damage is nice. I wont deny it. But..you have basically 5? powers that look the SAME. One cone that has really odd graphics when used with boost range, and the cooool tier 9. That is my biggest issue with it..all the attacks 'feel' the same.

Another thing that really gets to me is that the sets 'plays' laggy. I do not know how else to describe it (maybe others can echo the feeling) but it constantly feels like my attacks are laggy, with damage coming right at the end, and mobs seeming to die after they should.

Mind you, I still can;t decide if it is lag, the set itself, or just me. Or maybe it is that I just am not a flight person and miss melee attacks. On paper at least, the damage the set can do is huge. Hope that helped.

Oh, just noticed your Dis question. It is a neat gimmick but..a lot of the time it seems to happen only as stuff dies. I also seem to notice teh cone (cutting beam) seeming to spread the Dis effect..even though it makes no mention of being able to.

My BM/Thermal Corruptor stalled in the mid 20s but I have altitis like a ****, so that's not really new. I kind of like the set, but opening with Disintergrate on every mob gets really old and on any team it feels like getting Dis to spread is a real hassle. I actually kind of like the sound effects but most people complain about them. I've been taking every power I could from the set because I wasn't really sure where I ws going when I started my Cor and I'm just planning to respec out of it. I'm likely going to end up skipping 2 or 3 attacks, but that's not really anything surprising. I actually like the snipe in the set which I usually skip on blast sets. I need to get my debuffs from thermal before I really make a decision on the set, but there were too many things that I started in so short a time that my Cor will just have to wait.

I made a BR/Cold GM soloer. It feels really slow. The only really good skill IMO is the final nuke. The rest are just meh.

I've got a beam/dark corr at almost 30, so far I'm enjoying it, but I do have to agree that beam is a bit of an odd blast set.

It *does* have pretty darn good ST damage. Between being able to drop an extra 15% resist debuff on things and getting all that extra damage from disintegrating stuff, you burn down single targets quite quickly. But, it requires fiddling. It's not high ST damage just because you have attacks with flat-out ridiculous DPA like fire - you have to be careful and methodical - and it requires a bit more effort.

Solo, I have no problems with the set. It's never going to be an x8-spawn-munching AoE powerhouse, but it's still fun and effective. Lancer shot's stun is awesome, and the one real AoE you have is at least a decent one. You have time to decide who to shoot and in what order, and when you do, it's very effective. I might not be able to simply blast all the minions out of the way at once, but I can burn through them with ST attacks almost as fast. And it's nice to burn down EBs almost casually.

On big teams is where I kinda feel a bit let down. There's two issues - large team spawns bring the set's poor AoE to the front, and the chaotic team environment makes it harder to leverage disintegration. With AoEs flying all over the place, my net damage contribution usually ends up being one shot from cutting beam (with no disintegration in place because I need to use it *now*), and with all the explosions and chaos spending time trying to find a good target to disintegrate for ST damage often means I don't end up shooting at all. I mostly find myself first using my debuffs and then just spamming attacks at whatever I can see so that I have a chance to actually shoot something. And if that's all I'm doing, basically any set with more than one AOE would do it better.

*However*, if the situations where it falls down are the ones where stuff is dying at lightspeed *anyway*, it doesn't really *matter* that much that you're only getting the chance to toss one AoE instead of multiple. That's why I'm not really too bothered by it - well, that and the fact that I know I'm doing a lot of good with my secondary, too. I could see why a blaster might be less impressed, though (although they don't have to worry about spending time debuffing stuff). I also still don't have the critically important last power out of each set - we'll see how much better the AoE feels once I can mininuke every second or third spawn, and once fluffy is doing a good chunk of my work for me so that I have more time to blast.

I do think, though, that the disintegration mechanic could use a further buff (afaik, it was already buffed once in beta by improving the chance for spread on various attacks). I personally would give *all* beam rifle attacks a chance to cause spread (why would it just be the ST ones?), and probably buff the spread chances a bit more (at least on the low chance powers).

As it stands, the problem is that you just don't get much disintegrate spread in crowds unless you've got a bunch of beam rifle users who are actively trying to maximize it. Solo, it's difficult for one character to physically fire attacks fast enough to get much in the way of spread, and on teams it's even worse because you can only spread to up to 3 targets even if you do get it off, and stuff dies faster. Spread seems like it's supposed to more or less act like a pseudo-AoE, but the problem is that since it only triggers off of ST attacks and has such a strict target cap, the extra damage that results doesn't really scale with number of targets like a *true* AoE would.

I would buff disintegration spread itself to have a 20 foot radius/5 target cap, raise the spread chances by ~20% across the board, and give all the AoEs maybe a ~30% chance to spread. The idea being that if you disintegrate something and nail it with a pair of ST attacks, you've got a pretty good chance to have spread disintegrate at least once, and then a cutting beam will add another one or two spreads - just in time for an overcharge. Basically, just make it easier to spread disintegrate to most of a crowd.

Oh yeah, I would also fix the bug where if you queue up another attack while animating disintegrate, the second attack can activate fast enough to not get the benefits of the disintegrate buff. The disintegrate power needs to apply the 'disintegrating' state earlier in its animation.

I haven't gotten mine very far, largely because of altitis and falling in love with my SJ/EA brute. Solo I think beam is decent and fun, but in a group setting it suffers from the same thing that any set with ramp-up time (disintegrate spread) does; groups just mow things down too fast to make use of it. This is more a problem with general game balance than the set though.

I have a Forcefield/Beam Rifle Defender. He's at 22, but I really enjoy playing him so far.

I can speak as a 53 BR/Poison corruptor:

BR/Poison is crazy damage. To address the 'looks the same' argument that was brought up - I have every single beam a different color.

Envenom + Weaken + Venomous Gas + Disintegration + Piercing Beam + Assault + Scourge + Reactive Radial + procs

Yes, Piercing adds -resistance so I would definitely take it. It hits pretty hard too. You get a sense that the set is odd because you want to typically play it backwards compared to most sets. Disintegrate then use your heaviest hitters FIRST and work back to the weaker ones, as the harder hitting attacks have a higher chance of spread.

I've got a beam/energy blaster and I absolutely love it. I couldn't be happier with beam rifle and once FF gets ported to corr I'll most likely make a beam/ff corr.

Single target is amazing especially while using just plain IOs or SO's. I put interrupt time reduction into the snipe and its one of the few sets where I actually use the snipe power.

One of the only downsides to the set is the recharge on the nuke. I wish that it had the recharge of Rain of Arrows.

As a fan of Stalker, I am used to mostly Single Target damage and I can tell you Beam Rifle Blaster does a lot of ST damage at range. Besides the first 10s, Beam Rifle Blaster can easily out-damage most Stalker in ST department IMO.

The AoE potential is kinda weak and I hate the weapon redraw when I use secondary. I chose Beam/Fire but I really don't like /Fire much. I would have preferred /Energy because I believe Power Boost can enhance -regen effect? That will make Beam even more attractive.

Other than that, the lvl 32 nuke is great.

The set is slow though. If you are used to blasting with Fire, you may not like Beam.

Beam Rifle is definitely a great set to take down AVs.

Thanks for the feedback!

The disintegrate setup is why I went straight for a Corr, and the reason I'm finding it annoying to spread is that when I bought the set and got a BR/Poison to 30, I was teamed with a lot of BR players (I bought the set early) so everything was disintegrating and it was very fun, but now I barely see BR toons and I'm feeling the pain of 'oh gawd I hope Disint spreads now'.

I rerolled him into BR/Traps (that's why I didn't get BR to 50 yet) because I was annoyed bu the redraw, redraw doesn't bother me much but Poison was too much because the debuffs aren't AoE like, say, Rad and they recharge very fast. Also because since my toon never had a reason to go melee range, I thought 'damn when I take this tier 9 15 feet aura I'll have to change my playstyle completely'. With traps at least I can setup and then go back to range and blast.

I agree cutting beam should have a chance to spread Disint, I use it every time it's up.

And good idea on coloring the beams different colors Jayboh, I'll try that, I also find the beams a bit boring. I feel piercing pays too much for the -res tho, a little more damage than Charged Shot, very long recharge and the worst thing is that it has no chance to spread disintegration. But guess I'll try it, if I ever manage to get to 50 on the BR/Traps I'll decide later on what to skip besides the snipe... Although the snipe doesn't seem that bad only because of the 100% Disint chance and on most corrs it'll be safe-ish to use.

I have severe altitis and nowadays don't feel like playing CoX more than 2 hours a day even on vacation (a lil burned out) so I didn't know if other players were a bit let down by the set, seems like most are, or at least not impressed... I'm no min maxer except for toons I fall in love with, and even finding DP lackluster I rolled 3 toons until I found one that I was pleased with (DP/Dark corr, the 2 blasters before felt low damaging to me), but when I log in I usually pick another toon even when I plan on playing my BR

I rolled a BR/Traps Corr a couple of weeks ago. Here is my opinion of the set at 50:

Lag: There are many times when I trigger a power, the mob dies and then I hear the sound. It's not a big deal, just annoying.

Disintegration: Although this is only anecdotal, it does appear as someone else stated as if it only spreads once an enemy is about to die anyway.

Piercing Beam: I like this power, however I don't like that it only targets 3 enemies. It costs more, has a longer recharge and does less damage than Cutting Beam.

Overcharge: Nice power like many if not all the T9s, however because of the lack of recharge from the AoE IO sets it isn't up as often as I'd like it to be (68 seconds for me).

/rant
While I'm on the topic, devs please we need more than just the 5 AoE sets, 1 being PvP the other a purple. Air Burst is darn near useless, Detonation is only tolerable because it's cheap, Positron's Blast is worthwhile but expensive as the only "normal" IO set alternative.


With that said, overall I like the set so much I even rolled a Rad/BR Defender but I have him parked for now. I think I will bring him out once Staff Fighting comes out if I can level pact the two toons.

The 'lag' you mentioned - it must be some bug for when the 'flag' that is placed on the character indicating they are disintegrating gets taken off. It isn't due to PC or net lag - it is either a bug or something they can't fix.

I don't have cutting beam but I do have overcharge. I figured with BR/Poison I would just go for ridiculous amounts of single target damage for AV kills.

Yeah you basically want to spam Disintegrate whenever it comes up - it does good damage anyway and really should be your opener - if you play by key I would even suggest putting it in the 1 slot.

While I'm well aware that on these forums any set with redraw is considered anathema, my 50+3 BR/MM Blaster simply melts mobs. He did it while leveling, and he does it even better now that he's an Incarnate. He's a range-capped hover blaster, has t3 Musculature Core(working on t4), and has no problem wiping mobs whether solo or teamed.

The thing about redraw...if you know how to use it to your advantage, it's really not that bad. For example, my typical spawn wiping technique is as follows:

Concentration + Aim(this is where the evil redraw happens) + Overcharge(no redraw, gun already drawn from Aim) + Cutting Beam(with AH proc) + Psi Scream

If anything's alive after that, it's probably a boss, so I either redraw the gun to Disintegrate + Lancer, swoop in and Mind Probe him, or if a second mob comes rushing in I just hit them with Pyronic Judgement then redraw and Cutting Beam again + Psi Scream.

Single target damage is very nice, and if you've got a hard target to get the Disintegration going through the mob, it makes your upcoming aoe attacks even more effective. But you don't "need" to set up disintegration before hitting a mob with aoe, you can if you want to, but that's probably where people are seeing mobs disappear before their aoe's can fire. If your team is steamrolling anyhow, just point and shoot, don't worry about whether or not you're going to be at maximum effectiveness because even fire blasters waste huge amounts of damage on overkill.

Is Beam Rifle "omgfireblastpwnsall"? No.
Is it still highly effective? Hell yeah it is.

I don't mind redraw much, I barely notice it on my DP/Dark corr or my kat/regen scrapper. Poison annoyed because it's probably more active than any other secondary, with ST debuffs recharging in 10 secs and the tier 9 not fitting with BR's playstyle (imo, because I never had a reson to go to melee and ideally you'll want to be near melee with a tier 9 15 feet aura). But that's the only time I was annoyed by redraw on a toon, poison is way too clicky (and imo, the set is lacking compared to my old favorite rad)

It's more about what impression people have on the BR set, be it on Blsters, corrs or defs, since it hasn't been discussed much after the initial weeks.

And Jayboh, I still think Disintegrate should be a short recharge low damage spammable power. For example, Ring of Fire does more damage than Fire Blast on a fire/fire blaster, but in seven ticks, and who slots that for damage since it takes 'forever' to deliver? I haven't planned my BR/Traps build yet, but I may actually leave disint with 1 acc and 2 rech or something like that... or even 2 acc/rech ios.

I like it on my corruptor - it was a bit of a struggle to find a secondary to go with it (several re-rolls). I think I've settled on beam/cold now though (if it doesn't work out I'll re-roll for a beam/storm). I tried poison, really did not like it. My beam/trap is parked in the university doing crafting for marketeering... he's not much use to me for anything but.

I did not like it on my blaster... disintegration spread is big aggro for a single-target specialist. I don't mind taking some aggro on a blaster so long as I have the tools to deal with it. Beam has too few AOE's to handle AOE aggro imo.

Haven't tried it on a defender.

I am so sadistic I will try a BR/Pain Corruptor and let you all know how it turns out.

Beam EM with incarnates, Range Cap, Hover blaster. When I can get off Disintegrate with snipe followed by Overcharge it can be great seeing a bunch of mobs dropping. Cutting beam will clear out the rest.

I find issue that sometimes that 100% spread from snipe does not work.

Its one of those sets that if you get that Disintegrate spread your like wow. But when you don't get it your sometimes stuck taking out mobs one by one. Or when it goes off your down to only a few mobs so it feels useless.

On a team it depends on the team, if they are well slotted then your just not going to get off disintegrate off fast enough before the mobs are dead.

I don't feel for what it suppose to do that it is very consistent. EG Energy you know your gonna get knockback, Rad your gonna get debuff. Beam you might get disintegrate, you might get spread.

On a team I consider beam along the lines of what many talk about with Trip mine. Anytime someone talks about trip mine they mention that you should go ahead of the group and lay down a trip mine on the next group. I think that fits well with Beam if your looking to see your powers take effect before the rest of the team comes in and wipes out the group.

Its not a bad set but I enjoy my AR Device much more even though it might do less dps.

Yeah but think of how silly that is: you get disappointed that you are defeating enemies too fast for disintegrate to spread.