Martial Arts for Blasters

Malta have those ridiculous 30 second stun grenades. Most critter groups cannot hard-mez quite so continuously. Even multiple illusionists find it difficult to keep a blaster perma-held for 30 seconds due to their near-50/50 accuracy on Blind.

Originally Posted by Smiling_Joe ::looks at RaikenX's signature:: Something funny.

Not really! I avoid those groups or at least a huge spawn of them on my blaster.

Well one also should scale down the difficulty with Side switching content...the mobs tend to be quite tough.

I have difficulty with Mezz with the groups I mentioned a few posts up but I think the new I24 changes should cut my personal woes down by 3/4ths.

And Yes Raiken Malta are just plain unfair...the same goes for Longbow...God do you remember how powerful their sonic grenade was a few years ago? O.O

It lets blasters take more but look at what it means in terms of practical survivability. When you get mezzed in a high stress situation, you go from lasting 6 seconds without the sustain, to maybe 9 with the sustain.

It's funny because I would say I run at the limit, or maybe a little beyond my build's limits. Rebirth is for me, a more satisfying power to use because when I use it I have actively saved myself. But, I am relatively sure I get more from Clarion and Barrier because, they prevent the need to actively save myself. Clarion means I don't get those panic situations of making an emp and then hitting rebirth, barrier just keeps me in better shape most of the time.

That would be every other mezz chain and with 2 illusionists it would be 3/4 of the time.

That's a 50% increase in survivability. Pretty significant.

As well, if you're only gonna last 6 seconds, you probably shouldn't be at that difficulty in the first place.

Personally, I would say outside of hyperbole, running beyond my build's limits is synonymous with saying I'm currently dead.

Not exactly. First of all even con Illusionists don't have a perma hold. To keep you held for a significant amount of time requires two illusionists to stagger their mezzes and also land all of them.

The hold is *barely* perma at +1, and Illusionists still don't always spam it fast enough. Two illusionists with synchronized Blind have only about a 60% chance of holding a blaster for three consecutive hold cycles (thirty seconds) assuming you don't do anything to disrupt their attack chain (like shoot at them) and their AI fires perfectly. At even con, the odds drop substantially because without overlap the mez isn't continuous: realistically it would only happen about 6% of the time.

It's hardly an either or situation.

Well that is one way of looking at it. The other is you get 50% more annoyance of being trapped in mez before you die.

IIRC master illusionists spawn pets which considerably increase their numbers, so you wind up with a master illusionist, 2 illusionists and a dark servant out of them.

Either way 60% chance of getting a 30 second mezz out of a spawn is more than enough to ruin a blaster's day.

You disagree that I will continue to prefer Clarion? The devs must've buffed Mental Manipulation without our realizing it.

More seriously, I'd rather build as much as possible for inspiration-free play, and mez protection is the only glaring hole I can't fill (or compensate for) without inspirations (or Clarion). Even a half second without access to my AoE powers can seriously throw me off against large spawns of opponents -- and if I do have full-time access to my AoE powers, I find that I don't need Respites as often as I would otherwise need Break Frees.

(I'm also not a fan of retoggling, even just one or two powers, every time I get hit with a half-second mez -- but that's a matter of preference.)

Rebirth is mighty strong, no doubt. Generically, I think Rebirth's probably the strongest Destiny power available. But for Blasters, for me? No. If it weren't mutually exclusive with Clarion, then I'd snap up Rebirth in a heartbeat -- but it is, so I don't.

Your mileage may vary.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

I misread your post and thought that you were saying that Clarion was the go to choice for ALL blasters .

Its three illusionist pets actually. But taking on an MI is non-trivial for most archetypes. If you're not careful, its enough mez to break scrapper protection.

The MI "constellation" is an incredible three illusionist LT pets plus a dark servant plus a phantasm plus the phatasm decoy plus the Master Illusionist herself. That's huge tohit debuff, regen debuff, terrorize, damage debuff, four non-positional psionic holds, one indestructible decoy and four attackers that can shoot while phased.

Oh geez! Bad memories of that. That was back in the days that i was playing my elec/elec brute. He was pretty sturdy despite being purely SO build...but they were one of the few mob types that could melt him fairly quick. Longbow and Arachnoids...but the latter is due to the abundance of toxic damage which /elec lacks resistance to.

Still...just......

...Really kinda have nothing else to add at this point since honestly...thread has derailed a bit from martial combat to blaster sustain powers and incarmate preferences...

Originally Posted by Smiling_Joe ::looks at RaikenX's signature:: Something funny.

Something my Brute doesn't bat an eye at, even at +4. This makes my Blasters sad and jealous. And me more than a little annoyed.

Ugh... unresistable -res debuffs... hurt so much.

Brutes in general do not just ignore the threat of a +4 MI. Strong Willpower Brutes would probably do well, and high-defense built Dark brutes, but I'm quite certain +4 MIs can rip apart more than 90% of all brutes that exist.

The Dark Ring Mistresses are usually more of a threat due to the -Max Endurance. The MIs have a hard enough time just hitting my soft-capped Dark/SD/Soul Brute in the first place, let alone standing up to the offensive power long enough to break through with a combination of mezzes and debuffs. It's a very strong Brute combo with fantastic synergy, and neither Willpower nor Dark Armor.

My Brute is definitely on the bleeding edge of the curve, though, I'll freely admit. The sad part is just how far that is from the bleeding edge of the Blaster curve, and how much simpler it is to get there (in terms of build investment and player skill).

Hello, 1%.


Except for a few of its specific weaknesses, soft-capped Dark is far away from everything. My SR Brute can't get there running enough amplifiers to make my kidneys glow.

Although, in I24 Blasters at least have a shot at doing interesting things with invention builds. Soft-capped martial combat with both mez-breaking and the mez proc will have survivability approaching or more likely exceeding I2 perma elude. And I remember Arbiter Hawk or Synapse mentioning something about fixing Entropic when it converted to PPM.

I'm thinking the horizon of performance for my I24 Water/MC blaster is going to be so far above anything I've had with any blaster in the past it'll seem like playing a completely different game.

Originally Posted by Smiling_Joe ::looks at RaikenX's signature:: Something funny.

I think I see where the conversation got derailed from here. What size spawns are we talking about for the extra regen to be significant ? Regen's benefit is inversely proportional to the spawn size. The more incoming dps the smaller the percentage is nullified by the tail end of rebirth.

That also begs the issue just how large a spawn should a non incarnate blaster be able to fight solo. I would be surprised for SOed blasters the changes let anyone add more than additional x1 or x2 to their difficulty. IOed blasters are anyones guess.

That's true, but we're talking about a regen buff that will more than double most blaster's net regeneration. So while regen does have an element of diminishing returns as damage gets higher (its less that the return is numerically lower, and more that the time it buys gets proportionately shorter), doubling regen is still going to be noticeable in my opinion even at relatively high threat levels. Its not going to double your ability to scale higher, which is why I said its likely someone already built to take on x5 or x6 has a shot at x8, which is a noticeable improvement. But I don't think someone that can only handle x3 will be able to scale all the way up to x8 even if Sustain improves regen by 160%, because it doesn't scale that way. I doubt if the triple strength Absorb will get you from x3 all the way up to x8. But it will very likely get you from x3 to x5, which again is a noticeable improvement.

The threat level that would make a doubling of regen seem unnoticable is probably out in the stratosphere of sustainable +8x8 or higher. Meaning someone that managed to build to take on +8x8 might not notice a significant improvement in what they can take on if their regen doubled. Its also true my energy blaster wouldn't be able to tell the difference between current regen and twice the amount facing a +8x8, but that's because I can't sustain anywhere near that level of damage in the first place, so that's a matter of twice nothing still being nothing. What I can handle at all, I24 sustain will noticeably improve, because my current mitigation is not insignificant verses what I take on normally. For all players, that statement is generally true: their mitigation is significant verses the content they normally play against. And doubling that mitigation's regeneration component should produce a noticeable non-trivial benefit relatively speaking.