Fulmens

Tog replied:
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I figure Aim is good, but not until higher level when the short boost can be slotted to be longer, and I am facing enemies that I couldn't just take down without any boosts to my powers anyhow.


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Misconception Alert!

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I would add to that, actually, that Aim is important even MORE in the early game.

Why? Damage slotting.

Aim is a 65% damage buff- so when you're level 12 and you have two DO's of damage, it takes you from roughly 130% damage to 195%. That is, it gives you one and a half times your "normal" damage.

When you're level 24 and you have three SO's of damage, you are at 195% and Aim takes you to 260%.

So it only adds a third to your damage.

Additionally, in the early game, you sometimes have issues hitting. Aim fixes that, during its duration.

Aim (and especially Build Up, if you decide to play nondevices) are more important to me than Stamina. That's a big statement , but I feel those buffs on a blaster are THAT GOOD.

Ice/Ice has a lot of toys to provide mitigation- slows, holds, ice patches, more slows... it is possible to play an Ice/Ice and never get to the part where you do damage.

That's a good problem to have, but it is a problem to watch out for.

Ice/Elec gives you a whole lot of single target damage. Given that solo, you rarely have more than three or four targets that should be a very effective combo.

Ice/Mental- I don't know how this would work. I suspect "very well". Mental has a lot of nice toys, but on my Sonic/Mental I only end up using like three of them.

I'd probably go ice/elec. You can throw like seven or eight big hitting attacks during Build Up.

( Obligatory plug for my new intro to blasting guide goes here. )

OK, time for me to be anti- /fire in public.

When the OP said
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wondering why the hell /fire gets Melee AoE,blazing aura and hot feet in the first place... .

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My first thought was, MANY people have wondered that.

Firebreath/Fireball takes about 3.5 seconds to do about 3.0 "damage scales" of ranged damage (or 3.4 standard damage scales) -with BU or Aim, pretty much killing minions all by themselves .

Combustion takes about TEN seconds to do 1.5 DS of damage, and you spend three seconds of that in easy reach of your desired targets waiting for your animation to finish.

If I can't finish my targets in four to ten seconds from the time I open up with AOEs, I assume I'm about to pay into the Blaster Medical Fund.

Fire Sword Circle, good. Frighteningly slow to activate, but good.

PBAOEDOT collection, bad. Your share of aggro is determined by how close you are, how much damage you did and how recently you did it. Standing there hassling someone with repeated applications of small amounts of damage every two seconds is... umm, bad.

You can stack up a ton of ENd-eating, slow-killing, aggro-grabbing toggles if you want. I'm a fan of boom, boom, "clear the survivors."

... you may notice that a lot of things in Blaster secondaries were apparently taken from Tankers. They work better on Tankers. (Chilling Embrace, I'm looking at you. Sternly.)

"If three people tell you you are drunk, lie down."

... if one person tells you you are drunk,take it under advisement.

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Does this mean we're not allowed to use the Market to transfer to ourselves, or just that if we lose Inf doing it, tough luck?


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The latter. Someone named Gnomercy had a post once explaining how he made something like 450 million just looking for histories like "100/100/45,000,300/100/100" and buying those TO's and posting them for 1 inf.

It was a jerk move, but well within his rights. If you buy something on the market you do not get to control who sells it to you.

If it wasn't before, it is now.

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When did this turn into a "which one wins pvp" discussion?


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I don't think anyone else but umbra was using PVP as a metric. So "discussion" may not be the right word for it.

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Unless you're fighting higher-level foes. 45% is OK for white and yellow critters, but if you're fighting orange or higher, they are no longer floored tohit.

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Not quite true. Now Defense is complex and I make mistakes in public, but I'm pretty sure this is right:

The equation is (50% - your Defense + their ToHit buffs) * Accuracy. The part in parentheses never goes under 5% no matter how much Defense you have- thus 45% Defense is the "Softcap".

An enemy up to +4 has an Accuracy bonus but no ToHit bonus.

"Rank" (minion, lieut, boss, AV) is also an Accuracy bonus.

the 50% is a badguy's Base To Hit, for every critter in the game.

At +5 or higher (I believe that's the cutoff), they start getting both an Acc bonus and a ToHit bonus, thus breaking the softcap.

ToHit bonuses are found on (off the top of my head) Rikti Drones, Gunslingers, Ruularuu and anything near a Devouring EArth "quartz" doorstop.

The good news on this is, the softcap is enough, most of the time. You get to 5% * accuracy, it's never going to be any lower.

The bad news is, even with the softcap you're going to get hit at least 7.5% of the time by an AV, and there's nothing you can do about it.

I tend to use a mid-30's DO of some sort, not necessarily the same one every time.

It is important to make sure that nobody's underbidding your other character before you make the big buy.

Smurphy (aka Jojo the Bunny) used to be a reliable transfer mechanism- I shifted a hundred million inf around at one point, using his services- but I think he got bored with it.

B_L_Angel: You might consider that this isn't the first time a discussion like this has happened, with roughly the same participants. I've seen people [I don't remember if any are in this thread] make a statement, get their arguments ripped to shreds, leave the discussion and make THE SAME STATEMENT two or three months later, presumably in the hope that the other side has left or gotten tired of arguing with them.

I ignore a lot of people- I've actually opened a new thread and seen that it starts with four "you are ignoring this user" posts in a row, from two or three different people.

Sorry. "My technique will not stop someone who's determined to gouge."

/Elec only has lesser damage in actual play. Until you try it, Volt Sentinel looks like a pretty good replacement for a third blast.

Welcome to Paragon City!

Force Fields is... well, everyone loves having someone ELSE on the team who's a force fielder.

I wrote a crankypants little miniguide on the topic, just recently. Plug plug.

Can we go back to the cookie thing?

Austerity:
1) You can do very well with ONE other Elec-blast on the team, at least in PVE. Coordination can be tricky, though.
2) Tesla Cage, of all things, has good End Recovery prevention. You can alternate this with SC to neuter a boss. Someone told me about it, I was like "Well THAT's useless", then I tried it. It's not often useful, but keep it in mind.

Little late for Rex, but pluggin' my guide this morning.

I'd swap Aim and Power Push.

Also, frankenslotting good. You can, in five slots, get a singletarget attack to "one acc, three dam, one end reduction, and two rech reduction" at level 32, for cheap. See guide in sig.

I generally recommend only two expensive IO's for a Blaster. Knockback Reduction (karma or something) and Stealth in a movement power. Those each save you a power pick, and 4 points of KB reduction fixes 90% of your KB problems in my experience. If you're getting hit by a Nemesis staff, you've probably got bigger problems.

SPECIFICS: I'm coming at this from the "cheap, frankenslotted" perspective.

When you do something like this:
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Level 2: Fire Ball -- Posi-Acc/Dmg:50(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx:50(3), Posi-Dmg/Rchg:50(3), Posi-Dmg/Rng:50(5), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx:50(5), Det'tn-Dmg/Rchg:50(7)

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... first, you've got two Posi Dam/Rech in there, which doesn't work.

Second, you've got overall Global Recharge bonuses of 71%, and in-power bonuses of about 50%.

MOST of what you'll be doing is AOE-AOE-AOE- next group.

In-power recharge bonus of 95% and global of 25% gets you the same thing, pretty much, and it's going to be a LOT cheaper.

Try slotting like this:
Three Dam/Rech (Air burst, Detonation, Positron)
One Acc/Dam (Posi)
One Recharge [generic, mostly wasted]
With the remaining (40% or so) global acc bonuses, you'll still be at 95% to hit against... +2s, maybe +3s.

Drain Psyche is an odd one. With no slotting, hitting two people, it pretty much gives you more endurance than you can burn. [It's like one Speed Boost for EACH PERSON YOU HIT.] The only reason to slot for EndMod is to try and get over the 1000% Recovery point. If you can do this (generally, hitting six people after slotting - and it's a small AOE) you can nuke and start regaining endurance immediately. It hardly ever works when I do it, but it's fun to try.

GENERAL:
When levelling up, Aim and Concentration [build up] are more important to me than Stamina, and so I'd get them first.

The important IOs, I find, for a Blaster are two:
1) Knockback Protection. Get thou some. Karma (in Hover) or Blessing of the Zephyr (any travel power). Makes a HUGE difference.
2) Stealth IO in a movement power. I heard a barfight rule- "The first shot is worth twenty pounds." When you're a blaster, and can't take a punch, it's worth a lot more.

Also, here's my new miniguide to Blasters. You're there to end the fight, not necessarily to start it.

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Price the IO at more than your cost but less than the non-memorized cost and it's a win/win for both sides.

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Also, at the moment, even if you CHARGE 110k there's a good chance someone will BUY for 250K.

Tips are gladly accepted!

I'm an ebil marketeer, but you could just make the money on the new guy. How much are we talking here?

You can't stop someone who's determined to gouge.

What you CAN do is stop, or slow down, the situation where the market just runs out of salvage X "because it's not worth anything." There have been a couple times that Improvised Cybernetics spiked because nobody bothered to list them, or something.

I've still got one mini-guide to go, at least.

What was it that "made it fun to play" that they changed?

I thought the basics of the build were ice patch-taunt-burn patch, but it's my wife's tank and not mine.

I can think of three likely problems (not tough enough, too much endurance usage, or knockback problems) and solutions for each, but if you don't tell me more than "it isn't fun" I can't help.

You can do it using the market, as mentioned. There are a number of ways to screw it up, though.

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Don't list for more than you're honestly willing to accept

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Did you mean "list for less"? Because both are good advice, but for different reasons.

To clarify for the intended audience: If you list for 1 inf, you will get the highest outstanding bid- or if nobody's bidding you get the next bid.

It is entirely possible for there to be 58 bids on a "ten million inf" item, and none of them are above 50K. Don't make the 1 inf bet unless you'd be OK selling the thing for 1 inf.