PowerBlasters by RSRobinson

[DashZero]

Posted by RSRobinson on theCoH boards:

Link to original thread on official boards - click here!

POWERGAMER’S GUIDE TO BLASTERS

PICKING YOUR PRIMARY

The five primary powers are divided into two groups. Fire and Assault rifle are AOE power sets. Energy, Ice, and Electricity are single-target power sets. For leveling speed, AOE is simply better than single-target. For doing door missions, single target is better than AOE. Door missions are fun, but the higher you go, the more AOE has the advantage in leveling.

For soloing, fire and assault rifle blasters will be focusing on killing large packs of blues to yellows. Ice and energy blasters will be going after small packs of two to four yellows to reds. Frankly, electricity blasters should reroll. Electricity is by far the weakest of the primaries. If powergaming is your thing, don't take it. And for all you electricity blasters who want to respond by relating some story to prove you are not weak, stop. You are. Ok, you are still a blaster, so compared to other archtypes, you are fine. But compared to Ice or Energy, you are simply inferior. Sorry, I didn't design the power sets.

PICKING YOUR SECONDARY

Basically you have three choices. Devices has by far the best powers. The other power sets get buildup. Energy gets buildup at level four, so it is the best for a quick start. Fire has Fire Sword Circle, an excellent AOE and therefore is your third possibility. It works best with Energy or Ice to compensate for your poor AOE capability.

Before the increase in the damage cap, I would have said pick Devices, hands down. This was because Buildup is a waste when you can cap your damage from enhancements. Now this is no longer the case, so Devices is a tradeoff. No Buildup so you can't do as much damage as can someone with Buildup. On the other hand, every one of your shots will do consistently high damage due to Targeting Drone and the ability to six-slot your attack powers with all damage. When exping, you will have enough damage to kill the mobs without needing Buildup to be available. And you get lots of other good powers. I still think it is the best choice overall.

Energy is a quick-starter, you'll definitely do better between levels four and sixteen (i.e. between when you get buildup and when Fire gets it). But, those levels are easy regardless. I think it is not the best long-term decision but it is good for a new player to whom the low levels aren't that easy.

For Fire, Fire Sword Circle is tempting as a single-target blaster to get a decent AOE. Of course, Devices gives you Trip Mine but that is at much higher level. And Trip Mine can be tricky to use effectively (but fantastic when it is). And you do get Buildup. Perhaps Fire is not the optimal choice but I think, for powergaming, it can be a good one.

Electricty and Ice secondaries, in my opinion, just don't cut it. They have nothing going for them.

PICKING YOUR POWER POOLS

Every blaster should take Stamina. Once again, someone will post with his wonderful tale of his blaster who gets by without it. Good for you. From a powergaming perspective, your character would be better with it.

Next you need a travel power. My suggestion is go for Superspeed. You should only take Flight if you are already taking Hover since Flight is so slow that it barely qualifies as a travel power. In my opinion, Hover is highly overrated as I'll discuss in the section on melee. Overrated power plus bad travel power plus extra used up power pool (of your four total) means probably not the best choice. The keys to Superspeed are first I find it to be the most useful power for travel and fighting. And second, you will be taking Hasten eventually so you have the prerequisite and don't have to use up a power pool. Leaping just doesn't cut it for me, but that is a matter of preference. I like to do door missions for fun, and I always regret not having Superspeed on my current blaster. I tried out Superleap, it just isn't for me.

Let's talk about Hasten. Can you live without it? Yes. Should you? No. You will get experience faster with Hasten then without. More importantly, it will make a bigger boost than any other way of spending one power slot and 4-5 enhancement slots. If you are a powergamer, you will get Hasten. Depending on your build, you can delay getting it but sooner or later you will. Getting it early to unlock Superspeed kills two birds with one stone.

After these two choices, your power pools are for defense. Defense? "What is this concept?", you say. Aren't we blasters? Defensive choices are what separate the quick-leveling power blaster from the people who keep telling us horror stories about their exp debt. Especially for AOE blasters, you need some defense. When you are attacking a pack of 10 minions with a boss or two thrown in, there is a world of difference in how much damage you take from just a couple of defensive powers. The reason why blasters you read about are able to crush pack after pack of whites/yellows for great exp and you die is because you aren't using a few defensive powers and they are.

Devices is fantastic because it gives you both Cloaking Device and Smoke Grenade for defense. If you don't take Devices, Stealth from the concealment pool is hard to pass up. Superspeed negates its speed penalty and combines with it to give basically full invisibility. Invisibility is fantastic and you get a hefty defensive boost in combat. What's not to like? Combat Jumping costs almost no endurance, gives defense, and makes you resistant to immobilize in addition to helping you get around. Manuevers from the Leadership pool is a solid defense boost. Hover adds defense. The Fighting pool has some defense in it, but it requires too many power choices to unlock in my opinion. As good as it is for a tank or scrapper, I'd advise blasters to steer clear of it.

My suggested power pools choices are: Hurdle, Health, Stamina, Combat Jumping, Manuevers, Hasten, and Superspeed. If you are not going Devices secondary, I would suggest dropping either Combat Jumping or Manuevers to get Stealth. You can drop Superspeed for Super Leap. I prefer Superspeed because it is useful during combat. If you go Leap, you will be switching it off for Combat Jumping while fighting anyway (they can't be used at the same time). Plus, cooking around door missions with Superspeed is just incredibly handy.

PICKING YOUR PRIMARY POWERS

For Assault Rifle, at lower level you will function as a single-target blaster using Slug, Burst, and Sniper Rifle. Once you get Flamethrower 6-slotted and move to Dark Astoria, you are an AOE blaster. At level 22, with six SO damage enhancements, one flamethrower makes one dead pack of zombies. That can take you all the way up to 30. Finally, at 32 you will get Full Auto which once six-slotted means one dead pack of just about anything. Buckshot and M30 grenade simply don't cut it at high level and you don't have infinite enhancement slots to waste on them. It is more efficient to just pass them by.

For Fire Blast, it is all about Fire Ball and Fire Breath. Fire Blast is helpful mostly at low-level. At high level, you'll use it for killing stragglers that survive your AOEs - out of a big pack, you'll miss a few which you may want to finish off (or you may just move on and ignore any survivors). Blaze and Blazing Bolt give you, finally, the ability to deal efficiently with bosses. There is nothing wrong with making your fire blaster more well-rounded and you will have enhancement slots to spare.

For Energy blasters, Power Bolt, Power Blast, and Power Burst along with Sniper Blast are it. The key to an effective single-target blaster is having the three non-sniper attacks and cycling them over and over. Power Burst is short-range, yes, but melee is no problem as I explain below. With knockdown, it is easy to safely get close enough to use Power Burst even on bosses (if needed). Mostly I like it as a minion killer. Snipe a minion, it is dead. Power Blast and Power Bolt another. Power Burst and Power Bolt a third. One 'salvo' of all your powers plus a recharge of Power Bolt (which is fast) means three dead minions. This is your bread-and-butter exping method. Your AOEs are too low-damage to be of any real consequence. The best use for them is to do enough damage to a large group so that one Power Blast or Power Burst can kill them. In this case, you can double-up a Power Bolt to function as a third killing power (yes it does less damage than the other two but it recycles very fast). So you could kill a pack of 6 minions by Explosive Blast or Energy Torrent then Bolt/Bolt, Blast, Burst twice.

Since it was hard for me to find this information as an Energy blaster, I'll include it here. How much damage do our AOEs do? Not much. six-slotted with damage, at level 40, they both top out around 120 damage to an even con. Explosive Blast does slightly less damage than Energy Torrent. Power Push does basically zero damage. I was hoping 'minor' damage meant about what Power Bolt does, 160ish damage six-slotted. Rather it does 20 damage with no slots, or about 60 damage six-slotted. And that is with the 'increase' in damage in the last patch.

Ice Blast functions similarly to Energy just using Ice Bolt, Ice Blast, and Bitter Ice Blast instead. Your disadvantage is you have no snipe, so you don't get to start out a fight by instantly dropping one opposing minion. The advantage is that Bitter Ice Blast has better range than Power Burst (though it is still somewhat short) and your activation times are faster. Hasten is most critical with Ice Blast to get your three attacks cycling as fast as possible. Frost Breath does acceptable damage and should be used as your 'weakening' attack to drop mobs into single-shot range of your heavy nukes, just like for energy.

For all the power sets, the rest of the powers are purely optional. Aim is good, though not terribly impressive. Its best use is as a boss-killer to give you the best chance to hit. Inferno and Nova are both great for that tough fight (they are really excellent for door missions with big groups which can be quite fun.) Too bad they recycle so slowly, but adding recharge enhancements reduces their massive damage, their best quality. I've never used Blizzard but from what I've read, it sounds... um... underwhelming. Ice Storm and Rain of Fire are both endurance-intensive control powers. For Fire, I'd say skip it. Ice is more a control power set and can make use of the power better. To me, the key difference is that Ice Storm can be slotted with Slow Enhancements and is therefore a useful power. Fire Storm cannot be.

If you've taken electricity, I feel for you. You are a single-target power set but you lack the third nuke that both Ice and Energy get. You will need to use Ball Lightning more as a nuke than as an AOE to get as much firepower as you can. Don't get me wrong, its not that your damage is all that bad though it will lag behind Energy a bit without a Power Burst equivelent. No, its just that the knockback and slow effects of Energy and Ice are both very good secondary effects. Endurance drain is basically worthless. I laugh when I hear some Electricity blaster detail a rare situation in which he neutralized some boss with his endurance drain. My main is an energy blaster. I too neutralize bosses, with knockback, as that boss spends his last few seconds before I waste him on the ground. Plus, I get that knockback consistently and often in every fight against every mob I face. And I get a third heavy nuke, heavier than either of Electricity's nukes to boot.

ENHANCING YOUR POWERS

Here is the most important lesson in enhancing your powers. If you take a damage power, you will six-slot it. If you can not or do not want to six-slot a damage power, you should not be taking that power. The great thing about being a blaster is that the majority of your slots go to your attack powers, allowing you the luxury of six-slotting them all. This is why defenders fall much further behind the damage curve than just the difference in base damage, they don't have enough enhancement slots to fully slot their attack powers.

Once you have Stamina and Hasten (and probably even before), slotting attack powers is easy. Do you have Devices and therefore Targeting Drone? If yes, slot six damage enhancements. If no, slot five damage enhancements and one accuracy. If the power has a big inherent bonus to accuracy, like Fire Breath, you can go either way though personally I would favor damage. I would rather miss one or two of a big pack and leave the rest dead rather than leave them all with a sliver of life left.

Blasters are all about damage, and you will be the most efficient blaster you can be by recognizing that. Nothing is worse than a mob living with a pixel of life and needing to waste a whole additional attack on it to kill it off. The more damage each attack does, the less likely that is to happen. Are you running low on endurance before Stamina and thinking endurance reduction will help more than damage? Think again, having to use an entire additional attack will use a lot more endurance than you save. Think recycling your powers faster will help? Get Hasten. Before that, you probably are waiting on the power to recycle because your power did not do enough damage to kill the mob off on the first shot.

Consider this. Imagine a person who slots each attack power with 3 damage, 1 accuracy, 1 endurance, and 1 recharge reduction for a 'balanced' approach. Now consider the device blaster slotting 6 damage instead. He is able to do that because Stamina takes care of endurance, Hasten takes care of recharge, and Targeting Drone takes care of accuracy. With SO damage enhancements adding 33% at even level, the first person is doing two times base damage while the second is doing three times base damage. Every shot is doing 50% more damage by slotting all damage. Basically, the second person is doing the same damage on every shot that the first person is doing with Buildup. A free Buildup on every shot? Sign me up!

For travel powers, it takes two slots to max out Superspeed (with SOs), three for Superleap, and four for Flight. You spend so much time in this game moving around, if you can find the slots, you might as well make your chosen travel power as good as it can be.

For Stamina, six-slots all the way. Hasten should have five or six. The last one moves you from a trivial downtime on it to no downtime. You are probably fine either way. If you have the slots, go for six, but this is an area you can grab a slot from. Defensive powers should just get their default one-slot. SOs normally give a 33% boost, but defense buffs are one of the few that only get a 20% boost. It just isn't worth it to waste your slots for that little return until after you've fleshed everything else out. Its not inherently bad to have more defense, but it can be difficult finding the slots and I wouldn't weaken my offense by doing so. Its better to use one more power slot to pick up another defense skill than it is to spend five slots to double the effectiveness of a defense skill in my opinion.

For Aim and Buildup, two to three slots is enough to always have one up (with Hasten), though it is probably enough to leave them at one slot. For quick exping, you hit Buildup then use your attacks and by the time Buildup wears off, the fight should be over. By the time you find your next pack to kill, it will be up again even with one slot.

Note that once you get Stamina slotted up, endurance will not be a problem. Before then you might want to slot your toggle powers with endurance reduction.

WHEN TO TAKE POWERS

The first twenty levels are for getting your primary attacks, getting your travel power, and getting Stamina. Leave powers that are not critical for your twenties. You want Stamina by level 22 at the latest. It is that good.

If you are a fire blaster, you get your two primary AOEs (Fire Breath and Fire Ball) by level 8, so you want to prioritize your defense powers. The sooner you have them, the sooner you can start crushing packs of whites and yellows instead of greens and blues.

For Assault Rifle, your good AOEs come late. Your early ones, Buckshot and M30 grenade, are both pretty worthless. Your useful AOEs are Flamethrower and Full Auto, so you have time before you can turn into an AOE blaster. For single-target blasters, defensive abilities are still useful but not as critical. You really don't have the firepower to kill more than whites or yellows efficiently for a number of levels, and white or yellow minions are pretty harmless even without defensive powers.

SOLOING

First of all, understand that door mission are bad exp. The higher your level, the worse they become. They are a good change of pace and can be fun, but when you want to get experience, you don't want to be doing them.

AOE blasters grind best in hazard zones taking on big packs. Get used to Perez Park, Boomtown, Dark Astoria, and Crey's Folly, they will be your zones of choice.

Single-target blasters grind best in city zones taking on small packs. Door missions are viable longer for you, especially if you find a good one and keep resetting it. They have nice small clumps of whites for you to kill. But eventually, your nukes will be overkill on whites and you'll want to move to the street where you can find more challenging prey. Get used to King's Row, Skyway city, Independence port, Brickstown, and Founder's Falls, you will be spending a lot of grind time in each.

A tip for fighting street mobs. Spawns are done on demand, when a player gets near them. The mobs have a level range depending on where they are. However, most often a mob will spawn in level based on the player who spawned it. So, if the mobs range in level from 26 to 29 and you are level 26, you'll see a mix. If you are level 29, you will almost always see only level 29s. This is good, street fighting less than whites is a waste of time. But, it means you want to be as alone as you can be. If you have lower-level players running around triggering the spawns, you will find yourself frustrated with lots of greens and blues.

Also understand there is nothing wrong with fighting weaker mobs at low levels. In your 20s and 30s, white mobs are very weak to you. But low teens, they are tougher. Just because you will eventually be killing packs of whites or small groups of reds doesn't mean you can do it at early levels. As a general rule, you will get better exp by slaughtering masses of mobs weak to you as compared to taking a longer time to kill fewer weaker mobs. This is why AOE is better leveling than single-target. If, at your level, a certain pack of mobs does any appreciable damage to you, you will get better exp by finding similar mobs a level or two lower.

Stealth is your friend. With stealth, you can dictate exactly how the fight starts and always get off the first shot. This is especially important for AOE blasters. Fire Breath and Flamethrower are devestating, short range attacks. You want to move close to get their cone perfectly aligned before you open the fight. Stealth lets you do that. For Energy blasters, getting close enough to use Power Burst after your Snipe is helpful. Ice Blasters generally engage and fight far enough away that the mobs won't aggro until after you start the fight, so they can best afford to not have stealth. Even so, it is still a fantastic power. And both Stealth and Cloaking Device give a hefty defense boost during the combat as well. Its tough to pass up one of the stealth powers on a blaster.

GROUPING

Large groups, more than four, are purely for fun. If you want to get good exp, stick to four or less. Ok, actually you should be soloing. But when you group, you should be dominating the action. The game is about damage, blasters are by far the highest damage class. If you built your character well, grouping revolves around you. In a small group, basically you pick fights just as you would solo, just more difficult versions. Everyone who is not a blaster has one job: make sure you live and make sure you can do as much damage as possible.

This means if you are an AOE blaster and you do not have a tank who can hold aggro and let you use your AOEs, the group is bad. If you are a single-target blaster and you are not going for reds (and purples when they readjust villian difficulty), the group is bad. If the team's blasters are not putting out as much damage as they can to their preferred target, the group is bad.

Don't get me wrong, sometimes you just want to have fun and then grouping is great. But if you want exp, and want to group, you will need to carefully monitor how the group unfolds or else your exp bar is not going to be moving.

WHY MELEE IS NO BIG DEAL

Many blasters love Hover and claim that any melee is death, that you will always be dead in a hit or two in melee. They are wrong. Probably they don't have any defensive powers, and suboptimal builds that do not kill quickly enough. I have a level 40, and I can tell you that even at level 40 melee is no big deal most of the time when soloing (grouping and fighting harder mobs is a different story but a good tank will mean it still isn't much of a problem). Only very specific mobs are threats in melee and you will soon learn which. Basically, if it is a generic minion, don't worry about it. Melee with minions is more of a threat low level than high level. By level 20, minions are no threat to you. The mobs you fight will die in seconds, you will have defensive power choices, a few mobs swinging at you a couple times won't make any noticeable drop in your health. Pop a health inspiration whenever you get low on life, they drop like candy.

There are a few mobs that are a threat in melee. Any Boss and some lieutenants (Freakshow comes to mind) are the ones you do not want near you. You can use Hover to keep out of melee range, but you have to waste an entire power pool slot on it, and more importantly have to take the Flying pool which means one less pool choice for better defensive powers. Plus you are stuck with flying as a travel power, because it just is too darn tedious to drop to the ground, use a travel power, then rehover up over and over to set up each fight. Moving from pack to pack is constant when grinding, and Superspeed is the best to do it. A few seconds multiplied over thousands of packs over your character's career is a lot of time.

Being afraid of melee, even a little bit, applies mostly to single-target blasters. For AOE blasters, you are fighting packs of white or at-most yellow minions and the battles last long enough to cast one or two AOEs and then your foes are dead. They will shoot one round of ranged attacks before they drop. You ignore any bosses or lieutenants. Fire your two shots and move on. Melee simply never comes up.

It is the single-target blaster who is fighting higher con (and thus more dangerous) mobs and will be concerned about melee. If you have Devices, just forget Hover. Throw Caltrops down in front of you before you attack and melee is never an issue. If you have Superspeed, just kite. Fire your attacks, and while waiting for them to recycle, the few seconds, turn on Superspeed, back up to maximum range again, and turn it off. If you have Hurdle plus Combat Jumping, jump backwards to accomplish the same thing. Heck, just turn on sprint and back up. Of course, more often than not, the mobs are dead in seconds so you don't need to bother kiting.

The point is, Hover is unnecessary. It works, it just isn't needed. To me, it is a wasted power pick. At least it does have a defense boost, so that is one plus for it. If you like Hover, go for it, just don't assume other blasters need it to survive or that we die a lot without it.

THE END

[Hothgorn TheBlack]

I have a fire/fire blaster called Lady Magpie now, just to try and see how I am wrong with using electrical powers. Eh....s'ok, perhaps they need to make electicle faster recharging eh? I played my defender, Chemical, instead.

This article would explain why I saw so many fire/something low level blasters last night....good god!....so many........

and most of them kill stole from me

-Hoth

[DashZero]

I didn't know Dark Eagle was Electric. I had an Electric/Electric, too. I didn't play mine that much and deleted him.

I posted this for 2 reasons - 1. I thought it was an interesting angle, 2. I had a level 8 Fire/Fire blaster I was working on.

It has opened my eyes to the difference between single target and Area of Effect (AoE) strategies. So, now there are even more combinations of powers than I had considered. It isn't just 5 archetypes, single vs. AoE factors in as well.

[Hothgorn TheBlack]

No worries

This guy forgot that electricle attacks also do a short time stun, though I can't say how much better Dark Eagle will get with time.

[Soke]

Depends on what you want...if you want to powerlevel, yes, this is a v. good guide. I just make characters that I want to play. Yea, Shock Therapy is an Elec/Empathy defender...but the name is cool! Hehe. So what if the Electricity damage is blunted a bit?

On the other hand, Max Fury is a AR/Devices blaster. Easy as pie to level with her...very easy. I didn't TRY to powerlevel her, but it's hard not to, you know? Same with Miss Abyss. Dark Melee/Super Reflexes Scrapper. Now that she's 15+ and has her passive melee dodge, she rarely gets hit anymore because of the Dark Melee debuffing opponent's accuracies and the Super Reflexes...yeah. Didn't mean to make her "uber", I was just playing a character.

Anyway, thanks for the repost on the article. There are some really good points in here even if you don't powerlevel.

[DashZero]

There is much debate about the stun people see with Electric in that thread if you have time to read it.

I spent all Sunday in Boomtown with WhiteHotWhisper and took her from 11th to 15th level. Truthfully though, I couldn't solo any big mobs. My 2 AoE shots didn't defeat them. So, I am not sure that this is truly possible until you are 22nd level and have your AoEs 6 slotted with SOs.

Bigger thing - it was a grind!! I burnt out on SWG due to grinding. And even though I was totally into it when I was "powerlevelling" on Sunday, I don't know I want to do that again. It had the intensity of a Task Force, and that is just draining...

I totally agree with Soke, play what is fun. I have started numerous AR/Devices blasters, but I just can't get into that powerset for some reason. *shrug*