Power choices to make fire/nrg/flame work without IOs

Hello forumers,

I've been trying to get some pointers on help, but I thought I might as well ask here, since I have a couple of questions:

What are the synergies in fire/energy and what pool powers support them the best?

Do I understand "jousting" correctly? Do I run past the enemy with Superspeed and Total Focus will animate when I'm out of melee range?

Is Power Boost worth taking with a primary like Fire, that has no secondary effects or controls, and an APP like Flame, where the shield is resistance based?

Is Conserve Power enough to deal with end issues?

Why do I see so many builds that skip Rain of Fire?

Should I aim to get Aid Self, or is there some other pool that would be more useful?

Thanks a lot in advance!

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With zero IO's, that's going to be rough. I would recommend for *every* Blaster some form of Stealth and a certain amount of KB protection. You can get those with power pools but you generally do better getting a KB protection and a Celerity:Stealth (or Unbounded Leap: Stealth. You can put that in Sprint and it's a lot cheaper.)

What will keep you alive isn't so much the build as the playstyle. Being a big fan of Fire/En and Fire/Elec, and having played them a long time with minimal self-protection, I will tell you that your main synergy is HUGE FREAKIN DAMAGE.

I don't remember the exact number, but Fire/En has something like five powers that do as much or more damage than the second-best power a Broadsword scrapper gets. Ever.

My basic technique goes something like this:
* BU or Aim as needed
* Fireball
* Fire breath almost all the minions are dead now
* Blaze while jumping in
* Bonesmasher and Energy Punch (generally on different nearly-dead people) you should have eliminated two lieutenants by now
* Fire Bolt while jumping out
* check to see how many limbs you have and how many you started with
* Bury the survivors.

This is safer than it looks, which is to say still extremely dangerous. The key skill here is wiping out the minions. You have to do the lab to learn the skills.
1) Go to Wents, get about eight medium purples.
2) Find a good-sized group of even or +1 or +2 enemies.
3) Put on the safety equipment. Take two purples.
4) Pick what looks like a good starting place. (this is where stealth comes in handy.)
5) Pick what looks like the right amount of damage boost. FB/FB will wipe out even-con minions with NEITHER Aim nor Build Up, generally.
6) Boost, Fireball, Fire Breath.
7) See what's still causing trouble. Apply Blaze and big melee attacks until they're disposed of.
8) Run more experiments with different groups, different placement, different amounts of boost. Don't forget your safety equipment!

Once you feel like you've got it down... try it without the purples.

As far as your build questions:
* Conserve Power is OK. I don't generally have end issues but I frankenslot (at least) with cheap IOs. And I carry a lot of blues because I nuke EVERY TIME IT'S UP.

* Rain of Fire: I generally consider a Blaster like this to have a four second half-life in melee range, and maybe six seconds outside it. A power that scatters people and kills them fifteen seconds from now is no use to me. Many people's opinions differ. Also, most of the builds you'll see these days have high Defense in one or more crucial ways and just power through the fight that way; Rain of Fire is not really much of an additional defense there.

* Aid Self is a considerable advantage- but more between fights than during it. In the time it takes Aid Self to fire, you're likely to take enough damage to cancel out the effect.

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Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.

So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.

I use Aid Self with Power Boost on my energy/energy blaster, and it's pretty effective if you devote full slots to it (two interrupt reductions so it doesn't suck, max out heal, as much recharge as you can manage) and use Power Boost first. I consider taking Aid Self on every /energy blaster just because this is so good, but Energy Blast has the control to take great advantage of it.

Though fire/energy doesn't have the kb to give you that time to heal up, Rain of Fire might make a pretty good substitute. Rain of Fire --> Power Boost --> Aid Self.

And yes, turn on Super Speed, target something, queue up Total Focus, dash past and it should animate when you're way on the other side of the target. Takes practice, but that's jousting. Instead of jousting, you can start with Power Thrust and immediately hit Total Focus. Instead of you moving, they do, and they wind up stunned somewhere else.

You could also try a hybrid ranged/melee approach on a team: use melee attacks on bosses, relying on stun to keep them mezzed, then clean up everything else with the fire ranged attacks when the big threats are gone.

Solo, I'd do it just like Fulmens described. It's like a mini Fire Blast guide.

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