Just to see if I understood i24 correctly...

I'm working on my Ice/Ice Blaster. Now, I used to try and get as much defense into my builds as I could, because that was the only worthwhile mitigation I could get.

But if I read everything about i24 correctly (especially the various posts by Arcanaville) it would seem that resistance might be a more interesting goal now for an /Ice Blaster. So, I came up with a new build, based around
- the Elec APP for charged armor and Power Surge,
- Tough,
- no Weave, no Hover or Combat Jump,
- no Leadership,
- and the Medecine Pool.

Altogether I'm probably around 35% resist to S/L, 25% to E, the possibility to go to 75+ in those three and around 50 for everything else except Psi with Power Surge, and the Absorb shield to leverage as well. I'l be using Cardiac Core Paragon for Range, End red and Res boost. I got the Eye of the Magus Accolade for emergency def boosts and I'm planning on getting Watchman over the Invasion weekend.

Also, I admit I never took the time to understand Hybrid so far, so I'm kind of lost as to what branch might be more useful for this toon. He has damage AND control, so I get confused by the choices.

Any thoughts? Comments are very welcome

Until I see the changes on Live (or if I am lucky enough to get into test the changes on Beta) I'm not making any speculations on build changes.

Thanks for the reply, Arcana. It seems I did read correctly so far.

It's clear that without some hard number and real testing, deciding which goal is better is, at the present time, pretty much moot. But you'll notice I didn't mention aiming for a better goal, just a more interesting one.

I think we can agree that at the present time, soft capping a Blaster to anything else than S/L/E (with Scorpion Shield) requires some VERY hard choices, and pigeonholes you into some very specific builds. Not to mention that it forces you to run a bevy of toggles which will not only severely limit your recovery, but will require set up time after each mez that goes through. Of course, with high def those mez don't hit often, but when they do hit you're toast.

On the other hand, the absorb, while limited to 10% of your health every 3 seconds, stands against every and all damage type. It makes building for resistance much more palatable, where before there was no way to measurably add to the protection of Tough and the APP resist armors. So those powers will probably see much more use, and not having to take the def-enhancing pool powers will lend more flexibility to blaster builds.

In the case of my current planned build (and assuming values stay as planned), with Tough and Charged Armor fully enhanced I'd take only half of the S/L damage that gets past the absorb. Assuming a Cimeroran hacks me for half my health, I'd only take 20%. For Energy, I'd take about 28% of my health out of an attack meant to hit me for 50%. And when I'm running Power Surge, I'd take only 10% of my health on those attacks and about 20% for every other damage type except Psi. Of course, that's assuming the absorb gets to refresh, but still. That's pretty damn tough for the "King of Glass Cannons" Blaster archetype, wouldn't you say? Surviving alphas is gonna get easier. Not easy, of course, but much easier.

Also, there's no DDR available to Blasters anywhere, so even a measly Carnie Fencer with some luck can make all your careful defbuild-planning go *poof*. While resist shields, if I remember correctly, inherently resist debuffs by their base value. So while you get rebuffed, your resists almost never get floored.

Of course, they don't do squat against mezzing, so you could get slapped by an Illusionist anyhow. Pros and cons on both sides, but it definitely opens up options. And that's what I find interesting.