What does Beam Rifle pair up well with?

So looking at the Mecha parts in Beta and especially the Mecha Rifle, I'm thinking that I want to make a Mecha-style character with a beam rifle when I23 goes live. Or if Mecha beats I23 to live, of course. But Beam Rifle is a pay powerset, so before throwing 800 points at it, I'd like to ask a bit about it first.

First and foremost, what does it do and what powerset does it pair well with?

My initial plan is a simple one: Beam/Energy Blaster. For a Mecha it seems fairly straightforward. Zap them at range, energy punch if they get close. The character will fly, by the way, need to use those nice wings in the costume set.

But, I'd like to hear if there's anything I should look out for, or if I should turn my attention to the Defender or Corruptor side of things. Forcefields could also be thematic, but I did Forcefields already. Don't need a second level 50 FF Defender.

Defender or Corr? Traps - allows you to set up Beam attacks while something not you gets shot.

Blasters? I hate beam in blasters. However, I can see devices looking good with it (gun drone with a mech!). Being a fan of Macross Plus - /energy would rock (stuns, burst damage melee, boost range and power boost are a great set of tools for beam).

Edit: Forgot to say what beam does - basically a longish animating, single-target focused weapon set. The disintegrate effect rewards stringing attacks together with extra damage and effects.

Energy would be for Boost Range and Energy Punch to the face!

If I were to pick Devices, I'd probably got for a /Traps Corruptor instead. Getting the Forcefield Drone. But it's been a while since I did a Blaster, which is why I'm thinking it.

Slow single target set? I don't mind that. I played Stalkers before the buff before the one we just got and liked it fine. Don't get much more slow, single target than that.

Beam/NRG blaster works very well. I would just stick to your original plan and go with it...IMO get almost all beam attacks and none/few except the buffing ones from the secondary. Munitions epic shares some gun models with beam if you want to go that route as well. Ranged (soft capped to range that is) hoverblaster IMO, which is nice because: (a) It is cheap--not sure that is relevant for you but it gets tiresome spending a fortune on every single character; and (b) It is very effective.

Price is not as much of a problem to me as it once was. I have a pretty nice Stalker build coming together, so when she's 50, I'll probably have a good character to run stuff with. Plus, I know Market-Fu, and Hero/Villain Merits take the worst sting out the cost, anyway.

I'll stick with the Beam/Energy thing for now, then. Munitions gets the LRM Rocket, right? Now that would be nice for a Mecha, at least in style. It's no Macross Missile Massacre, but it'll do.

Just waiting to see if Beam Rifle will get a discount when they release the Mecha. It'd be a very Marketing thing to do.

beam rifle is for noob mecha

everyone knows that to win you have to form Blazing Sword!

Sadly, no oversized drills are available for Mechas to use. Otherwise I'd do that. Drill/Willpower Brute. Row, row! Fight the powah!

Could you post a few better screens of the mecha beam rifle, please? I'm at work, won't leave for another nine and a half hours, and I haven't checked it out yet. My main is a FF/BR tech defender and I'm dying to see this beam rifle LOL.

I recommend FF for pairing with BR because it performs well at long range. I was originally FF/AR but the cones were short and the AoE grenade had knockback. The FF bubble is a range of 50 IIRC. Your narrow cone laser shot benefits from the range (cone is widest at the end) and your final attack power is a nice long range AoE. Disintigrate is another long range attack instead of beanbag.

-EDIT
I see now that someone has posted a pic in the City of Mecha Stuff thread, but more would still be awesome!

Word of warning regarding Beam/Energy Blaster - you will burn a LOT of endurance with your click self buffs (Boost Range, Build Up, Aim all cost around 10 end a piece, and Disintegrate is also expensive). Also, the Boost Range > Disintegrate > Snipe for guaranteed spread will NOT work if you are too far away (it won't register). My BR/NRG is 50 and I've been pushing off his Incarnating for PVP purposes since he's incredibly unfun to play.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shubbie Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.

Beam/Poison corruptor - very, very powerful against single targets, but it takes so long to do it all. Very nice against AVs.

I've enjoyed my Beam/Storm, at last once I got her to Freezing Rain. Beam/Traps is good too. I think Beam is better on Corrs, more survivable since Blasters have trouble killing fast enough with such a single target set.

My Beam/Dark Corr is pretty good, but then again, Dark Miasma is always good.

My Beam Rifle characters:

• Beam/Time corruptor: Didn't work out so well. Seemed way too clicky and I was constantly redrawing my gun. Farsight is always good though!
• Beam/Traps corruptor: Tons of fun, chuck down my toys and go to town. Caltrops is a godsend for keeping things at arm's length while I pick off my targets.
• Beam/Energy blaster: Also a ton of fun. I got a lot of "since when does Beam Rifle do that much damage?!" type comments on this character. At range I'm a precision killing machine, and if something closes, then they get the Bone Smasher.

Unfortunately for you, real Mecha heroes use swords. Only mooks that get killed off screen uses guns

Beam/Rad Corruptor.

Putting toggles on things doesn't make you put your gun away.

Just got my beam rifle/time manipulation corruptor to 50. Gotta say it was one of the most fun toons to level up. As a corruptor you have the disinergrate aspect along with scourge. So you are culling the enemies in 2 beneficial ways.

The reason why I chose time manipulation was for the heals, immobility factor with distortion field, and hold factor with time stop. Time stop, plus disinergrate makes for easy killing(Especially with elite bosses,AV's)..

Also you get the toggle defense with Farsight, so I can take some damage.


The one draw back to BR is the draw time. Horrible. It's a rifle, why do you need to drop it before firing again?

The damage output is good, especially with IO's. Also ATO's with overload is awesome.

I will say that if you team alot, you may not get much of a chance to add to the death ratio, as for the time you get 2 shots off after disinergrate, the mob is all but dust from the team.

I found myself healing my team and buffing them more than adding to the death toll.

Time/Beam Rifle defender is delicious.

I prefer sets with minimal clicking to pair with weapon-based attack sets. Energy Manipulation, Cold Domination, Force Fields, Sonic Resonance, Traps and Radiation Emission are probably the lightest redraw sets you can pair it with.

I24 Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * (Current PPM * 1.25) / 60*(1 + .75*(.15*Radius - 0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30))
Single Target Radius = 0. AoE Non-Cone Arc = 360.

For a beam user, I'd say to go with something that lets you hang back. Beam Rifle has only one real AOE, and it's a cone, and cones are hard to use if enemies are in your face. Of course, if you're a blaster, that doesn't really matter.

If you go with a Beam/Energy blaster, then you'll probably want to skip Single Shot (your attack chain will be full enough as it is) and Penetrating Ray (snipes suck). From your secondary, you'll definitely want to take Boost Range and that early Build Up, and skip Power Boost.

If you take Munitions Mastery, you should know that the game engine sees the gun your primary gives you as a Beam Rifle and the gun your secondary gives you as an Assault Rifle. Therefore, you will have to deal with redraw, no matter what. You can use the mecha rifle model with the regular Assault Rifle set if you want, and that won't have redraw, but that's another issue altogether.

Whatever you go with, I advise pairing Beam Rifle with something that doesn't require a lot of clicking. The redraw gets to be a pain in the neck real fast. Thermal Radiation might be good, because barring having to patch a bleeding teammate back together, you only have to use your shields every four minutes and Forge every...thirty seconds, I think? There's also Heat Exhaustion and Melt Armor, but their recharges are relatively long, so you shouldn't need to fiddle around with that too much.

Energy is good it allows you to get range defense cap and pick up aid self. Incarnate wise you can go musculature which helps out the dps. Agility seems nice but when you start comparing the numbers between Musculature and Agility over a period of time you will tend to see that Musculature is just too high in the DPS for Agility to reasonably catch up to in a fight.

If you go Traps corruptor be aware that you can go defense cap but Traps on Corruptor is very endurance heavy and having something like power sink is not a bad idea. Also 5 slotting endurance is not out of the question.

Amazingly enough Device is doable with Beam because it also affords you to obtain range defense cap. If you look for a thread in blaster forum that blue centurion started it has some interesting number related to beam device and some build ideas as well.