Energy/Energy Questions

I went Energy/Energy/Force, and I end up running CJ+Weave+Tough+TempInvuln+Hover most of the time. It works: I end up with 18-20ish defense, 24-25ish when Power Boost is up.

Its really more relying on KB for its mitigation: the build has 157.5% global recharge, and gets even more because I slot Force Feedback everywhere, particularly in AoEs.

I elected *not* to take Power Burst. The reason has to do with Energy's almost flat DPA. Factoring in Arcanatime, the DPA of bolt, blast, and burst is 0.84 DS/sec, 0.8874 DS/sec, and 0.9447 DS/sec. Burst is the highest, but not by much: its about 6% better than Blast and 12% better than Bolt, but it also has very short range which means its often unusable unless you get into its range and stay there. And with KB, you will be pushing things away from you.

I did take Boost Range, and it can easily be made perma. With BR, Bolt, Blast, and Explosive Blast all have about 128 feet of range, which is pretty far away: not only can I engage from farther away, I can continue to engage targets I've knocked farther back and I can also use torrent at up to 64 feet away, which means I have a wider theoretical cone at a distance.

Its a very special-purpose build: spam attacks as fast as possible. AoE ends up being pretty good just by virtue of the high recharge, but its also good for escaping mez since bolt and blast alone are almost a continuous attack stream: I can use them while mezzed to either kill or at least knock down most attackers and mezzers trying to kill me. But its more of a starting place to see where you actually want to go. If I was going to make progeny of Hero-1, I might consider going more blapperish, and getting a lot more mitigation instead. But it depends on what you actually want to play.

As to whether Energy/Energy blaster is the best choice, again that is more a question of what you want to play, but if I was thinking about that, another possibility that comes to mind is Energy/Invuln Brute pre-Riktification, and Mind/Energy Dominator post-Riktification (the son of Hero-1 and Lady Jane *post* Riktification? Hey, its not my story).


Incidentally, Force of Nature only crashes endurance. City of Data tends to be more accurate than the text descriptions of the powers.

Picking Force is more of a concept thing, right?

It's a fine pool and all, but if concept doesn't stand in the way, I usually prefer to pick Electrical: same mini-god-mode, bit less S/L resist but decent energy resist too (probably the third most common damage type, after S/L, and especially common in the current iTrials), a ranged hold (not so great since you don't have a hold in your regular pools to stack it with, but still nice) and even an AoE panic-button lt-level stun are available (which does stack with your stuns). It also has an AoE attack, but it's not stellar (neither is Repulsion Bomb which is even slower than static discharge, but at least it adds mitigation)...

Besides, I'm not a huge fan of PFF and much less of Repulsion Field...

Quite Valid, though I question the need for Aid Self: you'll need to pick something mostly useless first and I always feel that green insps do the job better than Aid Self and drop plenty. Besides, with enough defense, hover, all that KB and Stun, plus the occasional FoN, you shouldn't be taking enough damage to go through green insps all that fast anyway...

And if you want yet more defense, you can go for CJ (which you can use with hover and costs nearly zero endurance and also adds immob protection), stealth (I like to have full invisibility prior to attacking for all my blasters, stealth+stealth IO does it for me) or even Maneuvers (which is good but consumes significant end).

By picking the 3 ranged attacks that you mentioned and simply slotting them with the nice and cheap Thunderstrike, you're already well on your way in investing in Ranged defense, so I'd invest a bit more on that for sure.

If you plan to mix it up in melee now and then, investing in S/L Defense should help too (and might be easier than going for melee def), using Kinectic Combats (or the cheaper and easier to find, but not as good, Smashing Haymaker) in the melee attacks you pick, plus Reactive Armors in Tough+Temp Inv.

Without a defense-based epic armor (and I do prefer the resist armors, too), I think it might be tough getting to the softcaps with just IOs, but you do have bits of defense from Weave and Hover (and maybe Stealth, Maneuvers or CJ) and the +3% def IO (and maybe the PvP +def unique, too, if you wanna work for it) that help against all sources of damage, and if you at least get to 32.5 you're one small purple from the softcap which is plenty good.

So my answer is: both. If you wanna blast AND blap now and then, going for both Ranged and S/L should be doable... Finding room in your power trays for everything is tougher though.

Those two are pretty good for most of your AoE needs, especially with the aid of Aim and BU. You can get them to recharge fast enough that you can just fill the time between them with one or two hard ST hits against a hard target and still be better off than animating a slower AoE attack, IMHO.

Your two Energy Blast AoEs animate so fast (like, 1s and 1.67s respectively, IIRC) that your other AoE options will feel REAL slow - especially Repulsion Bomb which takes over 3s to animate. For other characters, a 3s AoE doesn't seem so bad, but when I'm playing my Energy Blast blaster, it feels glacial. I eventually respecced out of Static Discharge on her (in favor of Surge of Power) because of that, and SD only takes a bit over 2s to animate...

The only problem with Energy Torrent and Explosive Blast is having to be careful with the random KB, especially in teams, but I never really found that much of a problem (and I DO use them, I just position myself with a bit more care). The KB is very good mitigation, particularly when solo.

Spring Attack is not a bad option, though it takes forever to recharge and throws you smack in the middle of melee. Not so dangerous since the melee opposition is now on their butts, but then you waste time hovering away from it instead of blasting (specially to follow up with your other AoEs, cause if you use torrent or explosive in the middle of the spawn, you'll make a mess with the KB)...

Then again, you might want to use Spring Attack EXACTLY to get in the middle of melee more safely, apply a couple hard-hitting energy melee punches and THEN fly back away... That strategy has the potential to be awesome when you can use it, and would be a decent reason to pick Spring Attack IMO.

Picking spring attack, however, kind of locks you into picking CJ (which is not bad) and SJ as a travel power, which you might not want, either for concept reasons or because you prefer flying... Picking Jump Kick instead, specially on a blaster with a ton of attacks already, looks like another wasted power pick for me and you sure have better options...

Energy Punch and Bone Smasher are great: they animate ridiculously fast and do a ton of damage (take a while to recharge though). Stun, not so much - if I wanna use a melee attack to shut someone down, I'll use Power Thrust which is less commonly resisted, actually does some damage and I'm forced to pick anyway. Total Focus though... I got better things to do with 3.3s, especially in melee.

Landind a Energy Punch+Bone Smasher+Power Thrust and then following up with Ranged attacks is pretty nice. The first two have a decent chance to leave your target stunned (sometimes even stunning a boss) and their DPA is great, the third will send it flying. You can either open up with them or keep using them on longer lasting targets that for some reason don't scare you (because of FoN or them being well-controlled or well-tanked by someone) or use them for targets that approach you while you are blasting (the few who can fly, or the many who close in on those damn low-ceiling maps). I wouldn't even restrict myself to using melee only while FoN is active... And I also would not neglect my AoE and Ranged attacks even while it is.

Looks fine to me. Other ATs and Sets might work (Energy Assault permadom comes to mind) since it doesn't look like your concept is all that tied up to this particulat choice, but it's not a bad choice and looks like fun. The only suggestion I have, power-wise, is the one above regarding Electrical versus Force Mastery... A bit tougher to justify the electrical powers in your concept (then again... MUTANT son...) but Electrical has some very nice options. Not that the character wouldn't be fun anyway with Force, so if you like that better, go ahead.

Oh... FPAA!