Opinions requested: Weakest Primary/Secondary and least synergy
By
Another_Fan,
Posted on: 2012-04-16 08:59 in Blasters
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Dark Blast attacks lower the target's to-hit and has a heal. Ice Manipulation has both a cone slow to movement and recharge and an area knockdown. It strikes me as having obvious survival potential.
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Originally Posted by Crim_the_Cold
You might try Dark Blast/Ice Manip. There is not a lot of synergy there from what I can see. Dark Blast doesn't have great damage and suffers from a knockback cone. Ice has a few debuffs but is weak on damage. It also has a mag 2 aoe sleep as its teir 9 power.
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Under construction
I'd put my vote in for Psi/Dark.
Psi's secondary effect is -rech which doesn't keep the mobs out of melee range.
Dark's secondary effect is -to hit which doesn't really add much especially since the PBAoEs don't have it. The main AoE attack is Shadow Maul which you can leverage an average of 3 targets with but as a too squishy blaster the 3+ second animation can be a death sentence.
Your problem will be that most of the combinations "can" find something to synergize.
In this case a recharge focused build relying on Soul Drain + Dark Pit + Psychic Wail + Cab + Dark Consumption. If you add in Electric mastery you get EMP, Surge of Power, and another Cone attack. It also gives you 3 damage types so no weakness there.
Adding Burn out could make it scary. Of course it would be a complete PitA to level up to that point.
-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
-I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
-When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. - Thomas Jefferson
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Actually its very survivable especially with a +rech build. Dark's -to hit self stacks. You can slot 5 posi in the Cones and a to hit debuff enhancer and using just the 2 cones and Shiver (and a convenient object or hovering) can keep a 10 mob spawn at -25% to hit, -rech capped, and out of melee range. YOu can add in Electric mastery for a 3rd damage cone.|
Originally Posted by Erratic
Dark Blast attacks lower the target's to-hit and has a heal. Ice Manipulation has both a cone slow to movement and recharge and an area knockdown. It strikes me as having obvious survival potential.
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The only problem you'll face is the same that every blaster faces against a 10+ mob spawn, alpha survival and mez.
-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
-I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
-When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. - Thomas Jefferson
What about something like Archery/Energy Manipulation?
Under construction
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Tangent: Burnout has some interesting tradeoffs to consider. It costs a ton of endurance and also cuts your max endurance by 25%. That's a pretty hefty endurance cost, but there are certain powers that can wipe it out completely. Drain Psyche, for example, as so much recovery buff that it doesn't take many targets to completely neutralize the endurance cost of Burnout.|
Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
Adding Burn out could make it scary.
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Its trickier for powers like Dark Consumption. You'll use Dark Consumption, then promptly lose half your end to Burnout and have lowered recovery. DC will be instantly back up, but can another use of DC make up for losing half your endurance and cutting recovery by 25% for 60 seconds? That's a net cost of about 75 end. If you can get 75 end back with DC, you can break even, but its going to be hard to do much more than break even; even if you wait to the last second and use DC when you only have a sliver of end left, you'll make at most net 25 end.
So far, the three powers I can think of that have this property that you might as well recharge them with Burnout, because they can completely neutralize the cost of Burnout, are Drain Psyche, Energize, and Recovery Aura. Back to back Drain Psyche gets you 60 seconds of enormous recovery, and back to back energize gets you 60 seconds of high endurance discount: you'd be getting the heal for free with energize. Recovery aura is pretty obvious. Some borderline ones are things like Accelerate Metabolism and Chrono Shift.
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Not a lot of special synergy, but energy manipulation is an above average blaster set unto itself. Early build up, power boost, boost range, and a lot of solid blapping attacks. Archery is a below average primary in my opinion, until you get to the non-crashing tier 9 with the recharge that looks like a typo.|
Originally Posted by Erratic
What about something like Archery/Energy Manipulation?
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Dumping Rain of Arrows onto a spawn that isn't in the same zip code as you are must be interesting.
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It spoils the team rotten I'm afraid.
I'd cast my vote for AR/Dark: AR wants you to be in cone range and lacks melee, while dark wants you to be in PBAoE range and lacks range. Also, redraw sucks.
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*Cough*|
Originally Posted by Erratic
What about something like Archery/Energy Manipulation?
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It's true the melee powers don't work as reliably with archery if used together frequently, but boost range more than makes up for this. No archery power needs you to be close, so boost range greatly helps archery, more so than almost any other attacks set. The range can be so great that you get 2-3 extra attacks in as they try to close, often ending with them dead rather than hitting you. and once they get close, power thrust them back and fill them with pointy sticks.
As to the OP, I'll have to say EN/Fire is not the best. Energy gives some mitigation, but what it gives clashes with much of /fire. A friend who i convinced to play the game a while back had an Energy/Fire as his first and main character, he quit soon after getting it to 40. (This was back before IO's were available to ease some of the survival issues)
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Back before Archery was cool, I was on a big team and after 3 groups of enemies in a row where I used RoA, the tanker asked me how often my nuke was up. I said, "Always." (We had a Kin and a Rad defender, I was perma-hasten and mostly damage capped with their buffs, it was so good).
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Archery is a below average primary in my opinion, until you get to the non-crashing tier 9 with the recharge that looks like a typo.
Dumping Rain of Arrows onto a spawn that isn't in the same zip code as you are must be interesting. |
Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.
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Rifle just has too much sick AoE to ever be considered for a weakest combo, even with /Devices or a secondary that lacks synergy, it is just too strong, IMO.
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Originally Posted by Zeh_Masteh
I'd cast my vote for AR/Dark: AR wants you to be in cone range and lacks melee, while dark wants you to be in PBAoE range and lacks range. Also, redraw sucks.
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Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.
AR/Ice was the poster child for bad synergy and poor performance back in the day. AR has been buffed a significant amount since then though.
I'm casting my vote for electric/devices. Nonexistent area burst damage and terrible sustained single target damage. Learning how to properly leverage devices would be key, and even once you did you aren't looking at a very high level of performance.
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I absolutely love AR/Dev Blasters. It's still the only Blaster I've had get all the way to 50.|
Originally Posted by DreadShinobi
AR/Devices. GLHF.
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It does take a talented player to make it work but when it works it WORKS. I'm nearly unstoppable solo (on SOs) and feel like I pull my weight (at least) when teamed. The synergy is also excellent in my opinion.
That being said, Electric/ has always seemed to be subpar for soloing, thought I find it useful on teams if you're slotted with End Mods in your attacks.
Honestly, I think you'd be disappointed with Rad Blast. It's a very nice set. I really dislike the blaster version of Psi Blast, though. So that might be an option.
Also, for a really bad synergy, you could always try AR/TA 
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Quite right. Beam might work, but I don't have it and am not going to spend the 800 points on it.
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Originally Posted by StratoNexus
That could be more difficult. Weak in defense: all blasters are relative to other ATs, but just looking inside the AT, there are some decent tradeoffs. The weaker offensive sets are stronger defensively. /Dev would have to be avoided entirely; it is slow, but way too safe for your goals.
I would lean /Dark, middle of the road offense and defense. Then take a primary that loves range and prefers cones and has little mitigation. Psi, IME, has too much mitigation. Beam seems best here to me. A case could be made for Rad, but Soul Drain + Irradiate is too much synergy for me. |
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Struggled a lot with the choice, but I actually roled
*drum roll*
Psi Blast/Devices
It was difficult. Rad/Devices was a choice, but ultimately the low resistability of critters to energy lost me. Psi will either be decent or really, really bad against critters.
As for the secondary, that was harder. There were things in each to speak for them. Most have either too much control or utility or damage or all of the above for me. Devices isn't weak, but it's the weakest I can determine.
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
"Good" choice!
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Except that devices isn't weak. It just trades agonizingly slow for its strength. If you play slowly and carefully as a trapper with devices you can almost completely ignore your primary.
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Originally Posted by EvilGeko
Struggled a lot with the choice, but I actually roled
*drum roll* Psi Blast/Devices It was difficult. Rad/Devices was a choice, but ultimately the low resistability of critters to energy lost me. Psi will either be decent or really, really bad against critters. As for the secondary, that was harder. There were things in each to speak for them. Most have either too much control or utility or damage or all of the above for me. Devices isn't weak, but it's the weakest I can determine. |
-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
-I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
-When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. - Thomas Jefferson
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What I wrote:|
Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
Except that devices isn't weak. It just trades agonizingly slow for its strength. If you play slowly and carefully as a trapper with devices you can almost completely ignore your primary.
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Originally Posted by EvilGeko
Devices isn't weak, but it's the weakest I can determine.
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The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
The worst-case getting killed all the time combo would be, maybe, three times slower than winning all the time. Permadebt plus a little bit of running back from the hospital with eight purples and a Wakie/BF/blue/green combo.
I don't know if playing a tripminer really IS three times slower or if it just feels that way.
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I estimated once the worst case scenario if you died just often enough to stay in perma-debt, but no more often than that. It ended up being, estimating an average of two minutes of hospital time to hospital, travel back, zone, and re-enter the fight, about five times slower for 0x1 missions for blasters (kill speed when you're alive matters, so this is different for different archetypes).|
Originally Posted by Fulmens
The worst-case getting killed all the time combo would be, maybe, three times slower than winning all the time.
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You have to consider that first, being in debt cuts your leveling speed in half until debt is paid. Then you have to consider that while you're traveling you're not earning XP. If you, say, died once every two minutes and took two minutes to reenter the fight from the hospital, you're only actually earning XP at half the rate. Half the earning rate plus half going to debt service is already leveling at only one fourth speed. The worst case scenario that isn't just dying constantly I estimated to be slightly worse than that. That estimate did not include time between missions, which would dilute that substantially.
I doubt very many players experience this for any long stretch of time though, because I doubt very many players would continue to play a character that experienced this continuously.
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Well since you also wrote this:|
Originally Posted by EvilGeko
What I wrote:
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Originally Posted by EvilGeko
I'm just looking for a "hard mode" experience.
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Originally Posted by EvilGeko
Devices scares me because I tend to get a lot of leverage from things like stealth and targeting drone.
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Originally Posted by EvilGeko
I'm looking for weak in offense and defense.
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-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
-I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
-When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. - Thomas Jefferson
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In terms of damage mitigation, I would place Devices behind Dark, Mental, and Ice. In terms of offense, I would place Devices behind at least Fire and Dark (counting the offensive effect of Soul Drain). Unless you're going to use minefields on everything, I wouldn't classify devices as a high offense secondary, even with gun drone. Its burst damage can be quite high, but averaged over the set up time its not exceptionally high.|
Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
I was confused as to why you selected a high offense, high defense, easy mode secondary.
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Opinions differ on secondaries, but I don't think its a prevalent opinion that devices is a high offense high defense easy mode secondary.
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I'd have to differ on that.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
In terms of damage mitigation, I would place Devices behind Dark, Mental, and Ice. In terms of offense, I would place Devices behind at least Fire and Dark (counting the offensive effect of Soul Drain). Unless you're going to use minefields on everything, I wouldn't classify devices as a high offense secondary, even with gun drone. Its burst damage can be quite high, but averaged over the set up time its not exceptionally high.
Opinions differ on secondaries, but I don't think its a prevalent opinion that devices is a high offense high defense easy mode secondary. |
No other secondary has a PBAoE attack that can be stacked multiple times that can deal 400-500 damage per application. No other secondary has a built in crashless, half strength, nuke that can be placed with near perfect safety using the tools that are in that secondary and detonates with the blaster potentially out of line of sight of the mobs or even entirely out of range of the mobs.
On SOs alone a /devices blaster can layout 3 mines in 51 seconds (without hasten) that will deal 1137-1461 damage in less than 1 second to a 16 mob spawn without the blaster being subject to even a single return shot (if the blaster properly uses the terrain).
So the /devices blaster can layout a field that will wipe out entire spawns except for bosses (which should go down with a single application of the tier 3 blast after the triple boom) without being exposed to a single point of return damage.
That sounds like both huge offense and huge defense to me (and that's the way that it works for my Arch/Dev). By your own estimate you could wipe out 2, 16 mob spawns (without using inspirations) in the time it takes for any other SO'd level 50 blaster to return from the hospital once (actually you can start doing that at level 31 as soon as you have trip mine 6 slotted).
The only time I die on a /devices blaster (post trip mine) is when I get sloppy because I've gotten impatient.
So I don't follow your reasoning.
-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
-I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
-When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. - Thomas Jefferson
I actualy want to like these two sets....but...i just cant help but feel like they are penalyzing the player way too much for what they do and what they give the player.
I think i sent in some example bug reports...as in some real good reasons....like for example....at level 20 with dual pistols i decided to go beat up trolls at a troll rave....It was taking me 3 to 5 attacks to kill the supa trolls....5 levels below me and it was taking 5 attacks?!?.....fine i still did it and got the badge for them....i then went over to defeat the ravers......again 4 or 5 attacks to beat minions 5 levels below me.....i hit groups and yet wasnt doing much damage...fully slotted and not doing much damage against things 5 levels below you...means the set is severly broken....should only be taking 1 or two shots....with out anything sloted due tothe bonus you get from level difference...but wasnt happening...
As for the dark....i decided to figure the numbers i was getting from the buff and how many it would take and how long it took to get it and things....and found for a buff power....that seamed to miss alot....it didnt give much buffage and wasnt worth the time and energy.
So my test was the easy one...mender tessract and going back to outbreak....then i rolled into a differing flash back....and told the developers to play those using dark/dark blasters....they should easily see the issues with the dark secondary that way....and how one of the dark blast powers should have been Dark Obliteration instead of the knock down torrent duplicated power.....As i feel Blasters dont need another Torrent power in another set.
Soul Drain actually has above average accuracy: 1.2x normal. And its buffs are huge: its +60% for the first target and +10% damage for each additional. Given that the damage buff lasts for 30 seconds compared to Build Up's 10 seconds, Soul Drain breaks even with Build Up on the very first target (Soul Drain's base uptime is 25% compared to Build Up's 11%).
Of all the issues with Darkness Manipulation, including the PBAoE mechanics of Soul Drain itself, Soul Drain's buff strength is not one of them.
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